How Generative AI Rots Your Brain and Enables Fascism

I think I owe you guys, easily, 2,000 words on something. So, let me shut up and get out of the way this week. These are the show notes for Thursday, Jan. 15's episode, which ran a little late because I was out sick and Andrew was traveling.

I will be back tomorrow (Wednesday) with this week's new episode of Privacy Tips. I am going to retool that show, at least for a little while, with a slightly different format.

Then, I'll be back again on Thursday or Friday with the next round of show notes for Episode 22.

Just an FYI that you'll have three emails from us instead of two this week, and then we'll get back to two updates next week (Tuesday, Thursday), which is our regular schedule.

Another thing to flag is that this particular transcript (below) is really long. So if you're getting this post by email, make sure you visit us on the website to see it all, as Ghost is telling me it's going to get abridged for those of you who just look at the email edition of this newsletter.

Progress is good on How to Protect Yourself From Fascists and Weirdos. There are four chapters total. Amanda is looking through Chapter 1 as I wrap up Chapters 2 and 3. While she looks at those two, I'll go ahead and write Chapter 4, and then we'll get this thing over to John Marshall Studios for recording. After that, you'll have the PDF and the MP3 not long after.

I'm trying to consolidate operations of The Monroe Gazette and Stupid Sexy Privacy. The Monroe Gazette was supposed to close down (and get off Substack) in December 2025. But then ICE decided it was going to open a mini-concentration camp six minutes from my parent's home. So, I got caught up trying to juggle the writing for the Gazette (which is easily over 10,000 words a week) with Stupid Sexy Privacy, and it has thrown me way off track.

It's just way more writing than I think I ever planned for, but that's a good problem to have. I'm letting you know because I think transparency and trust are important. This is something that's touched on a lot in the interview with the StopGenAI collaborative (below). We will only get through this Triple Crisis (the Climate Emergency, staggering inequality, and the rise of fascism) together, and we can't do that unless we trust each other. Trust comes from truth. So the truth is I am biting off more than I can chew by keeping the Gazette around (it barely makes any money), but I think there's a way to streamline things so I'm still delivering Stupid Sexy Privacy on schedule while keeping my local community informed of a potential looming danger.

Alright. Enough from me. I'll see you tomorrow. We're going to talk about activism. I hope you're as excited as I am because we can sit around and worry about what's going to happen next, or we can organize and do something about it.

I say, let's do something about it.

- BJ

Show Notes

Stupid Sexy Privacy Show Notes For Season 1, Episode 21

Episode Title: How Generative AI Rots Your Brain and Enables Fascism

Guest:

Kim Crawley - Founder of the StopGenAI Colloborative and author of the Technofascism Survival Guide, which you can check out on Kickstarter here.

Ryan Wilson - Member of the StopGenAI Colloborative.

William Lavelle - Founder of Haven Social, come check out the Kickstarter here.

Episode Summary: In our second panel discussion, BJ Mendelson is joined by members of the StopGenAI.com collaborative to discuss how GenAI rots your brains and your democracy.

Highlights From Our Interview with StopGenAI.com

-The Kickstarter for Haven is now live! IF you're looking for an alternative social network that protects your art and face from being stolen, this is something you should take a look at.

-Wear a face mask (to protect from COIVD and the Flu), sunglasses, and a hat if you're going to a protest. And if you can, go with a friend and leave your phone at home. (Pro Tip: If you have an attorney, write your attorney's number on your arm in marker if you need to reference it later. Hopefully, you won't, but better safe than sorry.)

-Mutual Aid is needed to make a General Strike successful, which is what makes groups like StopGenAI.com important for you to support, not just financially, but with your time and energy if you can. This is how you defeat fascism. It's not through passing counter legislation.

Resources (NO Affiliate Links. This is what we use.)

Our Sponsor: DuckDuckGo <--Our Recommended Browser and VPN

Get Your Privacy Notebook: Get your Leuchtturm1917 notebook here.

-BitWarden.com (Password Manager: easier to use, costs money)

- KeepPassXC (Password Manager: free, harder to use, but more secure)

-Slnt Privacy Stickers for Phones and Laptops

-Slnt Faraday bag for your Stranger Danger phone.

-Mic-Lock Microphone Blockers

-Mic-Lock Camera Finder Pro

-BitDefender (best anti-virus for most people across most devices)

-Stop using SMS and WhatsApp, start using Signal.

-Use Element instead of Slack for group coordination

-Use the StopGenAI guide to get GenAI out of your life.

--Use cash whenever possible. If you have to buy something online, try to use Privacy.com to shield your actual credit or debit card when making purchases online.

Get In Touch: You can contact us here

Want the full transcript for this week's episode?

Easy. All you gotta do is sign-up for our free newsletter. If you do, you'll also get a .mp3 and .pdf of our new book, "How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos" as soon as it's ready.

Stupid Sexy Privacy Season 1, Episode 21

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Stupid Sexy Privacy Intro

Rosie: Welcome to another edition of Stupid Sexy Privacy. 

Andrew: A podcast miniseries sponsored by our friends at DuckDuckGo. 

Rosie: I’m your host, Rosie Tran. 

You may have seen me on Rosie Tran Presents, which is now available on Amazon Prime.

Andrew: And I’m your co-producer, Andrew VanVoorhis. With us, as always, is Bonzo the Snow Monkey.

Bonzo: Monkey sound!

Rosie: I’m pretty sure that’s not what a Japanese Macaque sounds like.

Andrew: Oh it’s not. Not even close.

Rosie: Let’s hope there aren’t any zooologists listening.

Bonzo: Monkey Sound!

Rosie: Ok. I’m ALSO pretty sure that’s not what a Snow Monkey sounds like.

*Clear hers throat*

Rosie: Over the course of this miniseries, we’re going to offer you short, actionable tips to protect your data, your privacy, and yourself from fascists and weirdos.

These tips were sourced by our fearless leader — he really hates when we call him that — BJ Mendelson. 

Episodes 1 through 31 were written a couple of years ago. 

But since a lot of that advice is still relevant, we thought it would be worth sharing again for those who missed it.

Andrew: And if you have heard these episodes before, you should know we’ve gone back and updated a bunch of them.

Even adding some brand new interviews and privacy tips along the way.

Rosie: That’s right. So before we get into today’s episode, make sure you visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com and subscribe to our newsletter.

Andrew: This way you can get updates on the show, and be the first to know when new episodes are released in 2026.

Rosie: And if you sign-up for the newsletter, you’ll also get a free pdf and mp3 copy of BJ and Amanda King’s new book, “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.” All you have to do is visit StupidSexyPrivacy.com

Andrew: StupidSexyPrivacy.com

Rosie: That’s what I just said. StupidSexyPrivacy.com.

Andrew: I know, but repetition is the key to success. You know what else is?

Rosie: What?

Bonzo: Another, different, monkey sound!

Rosie: I’m really glad this show isn’t on YouTube, because they’d pull it down like, immediately.

Andrew: I know. Google sucks.

Rosie: And on that note, let’s get to today’s privacy tip!

Interview with StopGenAI.com Team

(Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

BJ Mendelson, Co-Producer of Stupid Sexy Privacy: Hello everyone. A lot of people liked our last panel discussion that we did with the Human Assisted Technology Lab at Clemson University. So, I thought it'd be fun to do another one. This time with our friends at Stop Generative AI. So, I'd like to have everyone take a moment just to have everyone introduce themselves, and we'll go from there.

Ryan Wilson, StopGenAI Collaborative Member: Hi, my name is Ryan Wilson. I am a member of StopGenAI.com. I'm here because I'm nervous that this stuff's gonna turn my kid's brain off, you know, in a lot of ways. So thanks for having us. I appreciate it.

Kim Crawley, StopGenAI Collaborative member, and author of the Technofascism Survival Guide: Ryan, Ryan is really cool. Like he is, he spends much of his time on the internet, educating people about socialist ideas and literature. He's a really, really devoted husband and father, and he's really, really devoted to political activism and the resistance to gen AI. I find it really cool to have him as an ally.

And I'm Kim Crawley. And I am a cybersecurity researcher / writer by trade, which is an interesting career I just kind of stumbled into in my life, I guess. And I've written lots of books about cybersecurity. I was in the first tribe of hackers book, which is kind of a who's who of the cybersecurity industry. I have IEE citations and stuff like that. I've written lots of white papers on lots of like highly advanced technical stuff like cybersecurity regulations in factories and stuff like that. So, you know, given my prestigious background, and I've just recently finished working as a professor of enterprise cybersecurity ... Obviously, because I'm a millennial, that means I'm now terrified about how I'm to pay my rent.

BJ: Yes. Same.

Kim: You can accomplish that much and still be terrified about how you're going to pay your rent. And Generative AI is a major factor in that.

And William is also totally cool. And he's got a really great project that he wants to talk about.

William, StopGenAI Collaborative member and founder of Haven: Hey there. My name is William. I'm the founder of a startup that is building a social media very similar to Instagram and TikTok, except that everything you upload to it is protected from AI facial recognition surveillance, like a ClearView AI. I'm sure the listeners of this podcast are familiar with. And then also it helps you protect your art from AI art generators. It allows you to poison it for free. So a lot of fun.

BJ: Yeah. And it couldn't be more relevant right now. I'm thinking a lot about ... we had a protest this weekend that we're recording this on, forgive me, I'm blanking on the day, January 5th. On the 3rd, Nicolas Maduro briefly stopped by the local airport on his way to New York City. And so our local DSA came out and they protested outside the airport and they posted photos of it online. And I'm always a little nervous when my fellow activists post pictures of themselves online now, because of the facial recognition. It's so easy to find someone as I'm sure you all know.

Ryan: So one the things I tried to point out, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

BJ: no, no, go for it.

Ryan: I point out to people when they're going out is like, you know, we talk about mask safety a lot because of COVID, and absolutely another really good reason to mask up besides actually not wanting to get sick is, you know, to avoid facial scanners.

It's been one of the really big concerns that I've had for fellow comrades that go out and do a lot of on the ground work. And one of the things that I try to teach them whenever I can.

Kim: When I was researching for the book that I just published a few days ago about Flock, apparently Flock's software can detect sometimes theoretically, at least if the lower face is covered. So I would recommend wear a mask, partly for that, as you said, like for COVID, COVID obviously, because COVID is everywhere.

BJ: Yes.

Kim: ... But also to disguise your lower face, but then maybe you should add sunglasses.

BJ: Oh, I like that.

Kim: To disguise your upper face, because it might be the case, hit or miss, that just disguising your lower face might not be enough.

William: Yeah, they also make you look super cool.

BJ: That's right. But let me ask you three, because ... We have on a similar note, we have a warehouse that's about six miles from where my parents live that ICE wants to use as a mini processing center. Which is basically a mini concentration camp, right? Like there's no other way to describe it. So we are going to have a group of people out protesting. Is there anything that you three would recommend that those protesters do or to keep themselves safe?

Kim: Yeah, by the book that I just published a few days ago, digital safety in a dangerous world. And there's a whole chapter on OPSEC. And I have been ... I don't know about the rest of you. I think it's quite likely that the rest of you have been to some protests yourself. I have been to protests ever since I was in my early 20s. So I'm like in my early 40s. So it's been a while. I've been to lots. I guess the most notable protest I was very heavily involved in was Occupy Toronto.

BJ: Nice.

Kim: Occupy Wall Street gets a lot of attention in the media, at least it did back in the time, and people forget that there are also Occupy movements in other cities. So one of the largest Occupy movements outside of New York City was Occupy Toronto. And I was so involved in that that I actually slept in the park for a long time.

I've seen so much stuff. So, so yeah, there's that. So buy my book, you can uh go to kimcrawley.com if you want to find the link to buy it. If you're just listening to this podcast and you don't want to buy my book. That's okay. Then go pirate my book, please. Go to BitTorrent.

William: Heck Yeah.

Kim: Go to Anna's Archive and pirate my book. You have my, you have my permission to do that.

If you don't want to even pirate my book and read it though, then I would recommend first of all, if you can avoid bringing a phone, then that's the absolute safest thing to do is to have no phone on you whatsoever. But if you have to for navigation, for sending messages to people you're coordinating with whatnot, you have to get a burner. Get a burner.

My book contains instructions about how to make different kinds of burner phones. And yeah, but the only downside about that is, you will have to invest a few hundred dollars.

BJ: Yeah, yeah, it's ... we talk a lot about the secondary cell phone a lot on this show; and the different uses of it. Let me let me backtrack just a second to something.

Ryan: A protest phone, if you will.

BJ: Yes, I like that. We used to call it the stranger danger phone.

Back before all this happened, but now I like protestant.

Ryan, I want to ask you real quick, because I've seen those studies too about generative AI possibly reducing cognitive function among teenagers and children that are using it. Is that kind of rooted in the fear that you have?

Ryan: Can I? Yeah. Because actually, I'm not as scared for my child. OK, yeah. He is 100% anti-AI. His entire friend group are like, call it slop. They make fun of it. They want nothing to do with it. And so, I'm really pretty ... but he's 12, right? So take that for what this. But yeah, no, I was thinking about this today because like, I want to get back into doing BitTorrent stuff, right? Because I allowed myself to get lazy and just do like the iTunes, Spotify, all that other stuff. And it turns out that, you know, iTunes, Spotify, and all this other stuff are, you know, are tech garbage, really. So owning physical copies of stuff is important again. And so like, I'm trying to start from scratch, right? I was invested in that world and I knew enough about that world to get myself around, but I took so long off that those skills corroded, right?

And so I think that it's a microcosm for me of what we see on the whole with people, right? Of this thing where they just, you know, literally give away their thinking to the bots, right?

BJ: Yeah. They just don't want to, they prefer you not think, right? That's the root of fascism is we do the thinking for you.

Ryan: Not just that, but they're like... 'I really just don't want to think about what the world is right now or what the world is like. So if I can pass it off to this and then just go about my day to day, I can be one of the good Nazis types', right? (laughs)

BJ: (laughing) Yeah. That's a great point.

William, let me ask you, because I think people listening to this, kind of intuit what caused you to start up this company. But I'm curious, if you could just walk us through that.

William: Certainly sure thing. So this whole project started from my master's thesis that I did on TikTok, and all the creepy stuff that it does, and how we can protect ourselves against that. How domestic companies aren't really any better at it. They do the exact same sins. And how we can kind of move past that and provide an alternative to it. So that it started from a thesis. And then what really, what really drove me to bring it into being to as a full company was spite. Spite for like "algo speak" words like, like "unalive" or "pew pew" or in the case of protest "music festival." Oh, it just gets my blood boiling.

So that is what encouraged myself and my team to really start programming and developing this thing into a production ready app.

BJ: Let me, let me just for people who listen to show because we do have a secondary, like we have two audiences, right? We've got the activists, but we also have baby boomers who are aware that there's a problem, but they're not necessarily aware of the mechanics. So just when you mentioned "Algo speak" and "unalive", could you just explain what that is to someone who might not know?

William: Yeah, sure thing. So a big way that TikTok censors people on its platform, and really every platform does, but it started on TikTok and infected everyone else from there, is ... If you say a word the CCB doesn't like, say for example, "kill" or "die" or "Taiwan," they automatically have computers scanning video descriptions and comments and stuff for that exact phrase of Taiwan.

So the way people started to get around that, was they would intentionally misspell the word Taiwan so that a human can kind of guess the difference, but computers don't make those leaps of logic. So they might replace the I in Taiwan with an exclamation point. So it looks very similar, but then it ... but then the computer can't tell because it's technically a different word. The issue there is that eventually the authorities caught on to that strategy and they start blocking Taiwan as T-A exclamation point W-A-N as well. So then you have to make another Algo speak word and you just get worse and worse and worse and worse. The Algo speak gets more egregious to the point where you sound like a buffoon or like a baby. And the crazy thing is, is it doesn't really work all that well for censorship. People are still talking about unaliving themselves and music festivals and things like that. They just sound like an idiot while they're doing it. So it's kind of a lose-lose situation. So, people deserve a space where they don't have to sound like a baby in order to talk about things that are important to them.

And it's crazy. There is, you know, I love reading precedent for this. This is literally new speak from George Orwell's 1984. So you could say it's a double plus un good. I don't want to live in George Orwell's 1984.

Ryan: I found that if when I'm using TikTok, if I don't put anything written down on my TikTok that will it will get through most of the flags and stuff that usually gets flagged if I put like hashtag Stalin or hashtag, you know, USSR or hashtag whatever. It doesn't. Right? It doesn't get flagged if I just don't write anything.

William: Yeah, that's that's a good way to get around it. The tricky thing is that the rules on what the computers can detect and what they can't, are not well understood and they're not spread. There's no documentation for this. So you're totally right.

Ryan: So I was going to ask. this takes us into GenAI overall, right? Like the problems with it overall is exactly what you're talking about, right?

William: Yeah, exactly. So people end up censoring themselves far more than they actually need to because they don't know where the tripwires are. They don't know, 'will putting it in writing get me banned?' What about putting it in audio? And sure, yeah, you can sneak it through with audio, but a lot of people don't know that.

Amanda's Book Ad

Amanda King: Hey everyone, this is Amanda King, one of the co-hosts of Stupid Sexy Privacy.

These days, I spend most of my time talking to businesses and clients about search engine optimization.  

But  that's not what this is about. 

I wanted to tell you a little bit about a book I've co-authored with BJ Mendelson called How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos.  And the title tells you pretty much everything you would want to know about what's in the book.  

And thanks to our friends at DuckDuckGo,  we'll actually be able to give you this book for free  in 2026.

All you need to do  is go to the website stupidsexyprivacy.com  and sign up to our newsletter.  

Again, that website is stupidsexyprivacy.com and then put your name in the box and sign up for our newsletter.  We'll let you know when the  book  and the  audiobook is ready.

If you want a PDF  copy that's DRM free,  it's yours. And if you want  an MP3 of the new audiobook, also DRM free, you could get that too. 

Now, I gotta get outta here before Bonzo corners me because he doesn't think that SEO is real and I don't have the patience to argue with him. I got a book to finish.

Interview Continued with StopGenAI.com

BJ: Right. Yeah, this brings me to something I wanted to ask Kim. In kind of being the out front as a group that's leading the resistance against this stuff ... What's been your experience in trying to explain some of what William just said, to the media or to people that you need to talk to to get the word out?

Kim: Oh, about being careful about what you post online.

BJ: Well, yeah, but just, you know, the censorship in general that that would lead to.

Kim: I'm not on TikTok very much. Most of my experience with that sort of thing is YouTube. And I follow a lot of YouTubers, some of the YouTubers I follow have made videos about this very topic, about the words that they technically can say ... but they cannot really say because they need the monetization. They say, suicide or yeah. Like that, then they won't get monetized anymore. But they've also said in their videos and I've heard multiple YouTubers with like, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers or more say, that they still don't know for certain which words are going to get them demonetized. One YouTuber I follow, her username is coffee and cults, at least her YouTube username is, and she did a whole video on drama with the Sex and the City cast. And then that video was demonetized and she was so careful not to use any words that could demonetize her, that she came to the conclusion that it was just saying sex in the city over and over again in a video about sex in the city is what got her demonetized.

William: I actually might have a little bit to answer this question here. You're asking about media coverage of AlgoSpeak. Thankfully, it has gotten kind of into the public consciousness and been covered by mainstream media outlets. There was, I forget the exact museum, but there was a very big famous art museum that got in the news a while ago because they made a exhibit on Kurt Cobain and they described how the literal text of their exhibit was, at age 27, Kurt Cobain unalived himself. Oh God, it's crept into real life now. This isn't just an internet nerd thing anymore. We're saying this in real life. And it's if ... here's for the parents and the grandparents out there, it's affecting your children as well. There's a really interesting book written on this topic. It's Algo Speak by Adam Aleksic. And in it, he describes how he went and talked to school psychologists, school counselors, things like that. And when kids come into them, come into the school counselors and want to talk about, you know, like how they're feeling and maybe they had a death in the family and they need to talk about it. They're using the word unalive to describe the death in the family. They're using Algo Speak in real life, verbally.

Kim: That's how language works.

William: So this is super dangerous because we are giving the power to change how the world, how your children speak, change their vocabulary to a hostile nation halfway across the world. And, you know, on domestic social medias, we're allowing Zuckerberg and Musk to control your child's language. That's freaky.

Kim: Words influence how you think directly. Like my dad, who was a novelist, he always said that. I know, especially, I would consider you to be a Marxist scholar, Ryan. If you are a Marxist scholar, you know very well how language influences people's thinking, because sometimes you've got to gently ease people into using new language for things.

Like for instance, people think that ...

Ryan: There's a really famous meme of a Marxist Leninist and it's the monkey, right? And the monkey says, "together strong." And that's how you describe socialism to people because telling them that socialism is going to get them to shut off. But if you tell them together strong, you know, they get it.

BJ: Yep. Apes together strong.

So I want to make sure we talk about the organization and what you're working towards. Because the thing that attracted me to StopGenAI was, uh, in every interview that I've listened to, you've talked a lot about mutual aid. And that's something that I think a lot of people haven't seen in the United States in particular in, in forever. At least, you know, I think we're all about the same age. So I turned 42. In my lifetime, right, I have not seen actual functioning mutual aid for a political cause, right? Like you might have seen in other forms. And so I was hoping you might tell us a little bit about what the organization does and what it's doing to help people that have been impacted by the job losses.

Kim: Yeah. Unfortunately, I would say over the year of 2025, I think our PayPal account has given out a collective ... oh I'm gonna have to look at the the transcripts and the PDF files for like each month of invoicing to verify but my gut memory says it's been a collective like four grand. That's been given out Honestly half of that has gone to one of our comrades in our group who is homeless at the moment and so ... and that's but that's what mutual aid is about. You help your own members. You help people outside of your group as well, who are also your allies and your comrades. And it's about like none of us are rich. None of us own the means of production or anything like that. We're not capitalist. But we have a little bit of things here and there. And if you don't have any money, you might have time. You might have time and energy and talents that you contribute. So yeah, and Ryan keeps reminding me as well, like mutual aid isn't only money.

Ryan: Correct.

Kim: It's largely money in a money driven society money. I think when I think of like, in this part of the world, mutual aid, the first thing that comes to mind is food not bombs. Which I discovered in 2003 when I was like 19 and I just wandered into Gore Park in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. And there was food, not bombs, just giving out food to whoever was in the park. Which would get you arrested and probably on death row in the United States.

Ryan: I know you jest, but like I've seen people arrested for handing out food in the United States. I've watched personally, I've watched people get handcuffed and pulled away, you know, for trying to give other people food, which... But to go back to what Kim was saying a little bit about mutual aid, because she's right, and it is, it's also things like cross promotion, right? It's also things like sharing each other's work and being fans of each other's work and pushing out all these things. And so the thing that we try to do is, because most of the people in our collective right now are people who are struggling, right? That's how we came together.

We were like, holy shit, we're all struggling. We need to, you know, look out for each other. And maybe we could also figure out a way to help people outside. Cause there's gotta be other people besides us that are hurting.

BJ: Well, uh, William, did you have anything you want to add to that?

Kim: I wish that we could have given out a lot more than four grand.

William: oh I don't really have anything to add here. Kim and Ryan are the experts on this field.

Kim: Such humility for a guy who has the know-how to build a social network. That's the thing. Before we started recording, Ryan and I were talking about how the professional managerial class, sometimes especially in the language of Karl Marx, we call the Petite bourgeoisie, are interfering. And he was talking about how Stalin has written about this as well, about how people who are, call them Petite bourgeoisie, upper middle class, uh call them the professional managerial class, but because they have a little bit of managerial privilege in the system and all their life, all they've known is if they obey by the rules, everything will be great, and their life will be great and they'll never worry about anything and they'll have lots of money, right?

So we have an organization out there called the AI Now Institute, and the woman who runs it, her name is Kate Brennan and she refused to respond to my emails by the way, last summer. I remember that sort of thing. And, I was invited to join the people, People's AI Action Nw plan on behalf of StopGenei. Well, so I signed, this is my number one biggest mistake I've ever made as the founder of our group, was I signed us onto the People's AI Action Plan. But I had an ulterior motive. First of all, I should probably explain what that is. So the AI Now Institute, they're using policy suggestions and white papers and legislation proposals as their way to counter generative AI. And they are confident that if they work within the system, and without a doubt the United States is a fascist government. And you know, playing within the system, opposing the fascist leader with counter legislation is not something that works under fascism. You you couldn't stop Hitler that way by being the opposition party to Adolf Hitler wouldn't have stopped Hitler. But all your life, All they've known is working within the... To the People's AI Action Plan is counter legislation for Donald Trump's AI Action Plan, which is supposed to be like, no regulations for AI ever. Like let, you know, "let my buddies who are billionaires do whatever the hell they want, right?" Whereas the People's AI Action Plan is a kind of a liberal, we want regulations for gen AI. And then we'll put white papers out and I've written white papers. ... So like no offense or anything, but you you don't fight an evil force with white papers. That's right. Right. And so that's all the, that's all the AI Now Institute does. And I got involved with AI Now and the People's AI Action Plan because Brian Merchant, the author of Blood in the Machine, the book and the blog, and he makes a lot of media appearances these days. He wrote a story on our group in May, I believe, or June, and he invited us to get involved with People's AI Action Plan. And the only reason why I signed us onto that in the first place, because I was hoping that we could network with the other groups in the resistance. So I was in a Zoom call in early July with representatives from like the hundred other groups. And you can check this out if you go to like peoplesaiaction.com.

And I said at some point during the Zoom meeting to launch off this project, "hey, we try to raise money for like artists and writers and people like that who have lost their livelihoods. Are any of you other groups doing anything like that?" Keep in mind a lot of these hundred other groups are units within labor units.

BJ: Right, so they have resources.

Kim: [And they said] No, you're the only one who's doing that.

BJ: That's crazy to me. that I've seen that quite a bit. Like the people that have the organizations that have taken a stand against AI are also not doing anything to really help the people impacted by AI. And I feel like we always conveniently forget the lesson from the Great Recession, which is the big companies all said publicly, you know, don't let a good recession go to waste. Like they were laying people off just because they could. And I feel like that's sort of what we see happening here. And we're not talking about that.

Ryan: That's exactly right. They are 100% using ... and that's the thing that they've done through time, right? Never let a good crisis go to waste, also is another capitalist mantra, right? And they say that specifically because they use they're using this double-edged sword of rising inflation and generative AI to just. Gut. Theirselves of labor force, right? To put a proverbial gun to the head of the labor force. And because the labor force in the United States is so disjointed, so individualized, we have no means to even put a dent in this, right? And like, because what we would have to do is do things like that they do like in Italy, when we saw them do a general strike, right? And in France, when they do a general strike. They're able to do that because their unions understand collectivity, right? Whereas our unions tend to stand on their own. You know, like UPS fights for UPS workers and that's kind of it. And, you know, Starbucks workers fights for Starbucks workers and that's kind of it, which is fine for those workers. But again, you know, we need it for the greater [good.]

BJ: Well, let me, this is because the general strike is something that we've talked about on this show in particular. And our stance is that May 1st, 2028 is too far away. To make it different, right? Like that's, know that's what the data they have sort of circled as If we were ever to do it, that would be the date to do it. But I don't think we're getting there.

Ryan: Well, and that's the thing too, right? Is that that's what the that's what our group is, is trying to help with, right? Because if there is such a thing as a general strike, we're going to need funds, right? We're going to need, we're going to need mutual aid groups set up and ready to go that have money in the tank ready to support individuals and groups on the ground, right? Like that's, that are going to ... you know, decide to retract their labor, you know, we're going to have to support them. And that's one of the reasons why people have been so against a general strike is like, how are going to pay for it? Kind of thing, right? Well, that's what we're trying to do. Like, I mean, you know,

BJ: It's a matter of will, you know. Like it's to me, it's sort of like the Martin Luther King quote where he's talking about everything could change tomorrow, if the comfortable white liberal that says that they're with us actually got out on the streets and demonstrated that they were with us. Right?

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. I wrote about this in my ghost blog on the ghost website, but I wrote about let allies versus comrades a little bit because I believe that to be thing is everybody is fine with being an ally because it doesn't ask anything of you, right? It's completely performative. But what we need and what we should be as white people is comrades. And that's something that you earn, right? You don't just tell people you're their comrade. You have to earn that by going out and being with the people and fighting the fight with them or supporting them in their fight, right? And that's again, what we're trying to do. And that's the thing that the line we're trying to push is that we are here to help. Like we want to help. And oh yeah, by the way, Marx is pretty cool. If you guys want to read some of these books, like that'd be cool too. But also like you need help and we want to help you.

Kim: Absolutely. the capital, all the evils of generative AI is 100% capital, is the ultimate origin of all like, Genai is like toxic waste that is inevitable from capitalists getting at its very worst place.

BJ: Yeah, I mean, there's one of the things that we try to explain to people is that capitalism only works if there are guardrails. And over the last 40 to 50 years, we took all the guardrails away. So what you see right now is the end product of what happens when there are no guardrails. And so I was curious about asking you guys what, when you reach out to reporters, when you reach out to the public, what has the response been like?

Kim: Well, some people are like, yeah, way to go. That's great. And I say, well, you know, I respect you. There are lots of academics who are doing really cool stuff who I really respect. I say, you know what? This isn't just like a research project. This stuff, StopGenAI.com is not a research project where just like way to go and then you walk away. We would be able to do so much more if we had so many more numbers as in people in our group who were active and doing stuff. Join our group. And then like on Reddit, the reaction like, Ryan and I have been posting a lot on subreddits that are anti-genAI related. And you get a lot of like way to go kind of comments, but you also get trolls who are like, 'you are trying to, you want people to donate money.'

BJ: Right. Yeah, there's no trust, right? Like there's no trust. We've built a society where no one trusts anyone.

Ryan: Well, the question that they have is in the answer, right? Because they're like, you guys want funds? Yes, we do. We are very upfront about that. Like, you know, the people in our group are, you know, facing housing crisis is and job crisis is like these are we're real people in this group that have real problems and are really being part, but what we're also asking is come join us. You don't have to just send us money. And in fact, if we prefer you to come engage with us. Come sit with us, come talk with us, come hang out with us, come give us any kind of intellectual thing you can offer.

BJ: I found that, I'm on the steering committee for a local, indivisible group. And we've found that it's like pulling teeth to get people to actually come out, right? Like we'll get email signups and people saying, yeah, we're going to do it. And then some of them do to their credit, but it's incredibly difficult to, I feel like there's so little organizational knowledge or how to build an organization in the United States that we get into these instances of having great ideas, but nobody knows how to organize around them. And that's why I like what you guys are doing, because it seems to be like there's an actual, there's a push to do this.

Let me, in the time that we have left, let me ask each of you, if there's something that you wanted to share with people about StopGenAI.com, or just about generative, or what we can do about it, whether it be like a universal basic income, which is what we advocate for, what would that thing be?

Kim: William, do you want to start? Cause Ryan and I have been talking a lot.

William: I actually need a little bit of time to think. Let's see here. ...

Ryan: I know exactly what we should do. Marxism, Leninism. It's pretty simple, you know, a people's revolution and ... but no, in seriousness, what GenAI is and does is just a terrible thing for our kids, for our future, for everything, for our labor force. There's not a section of our life that it doesn't touch and impact in a negative way. And we need as many people as we can to come together and take a stand. And if we can get that amount of people together, and if we can all come together and stop using Windows and go to Linux or do whatever the other thing is to get out of genAI, then that's proof in the pudding that we're capable of doing so much more.

Kim: And also educating the general public, is something that we've been focusing a lot. Some of our members are highly technical, like computer science, PhD level technical. And some of us aren't very technical, but all of our members who do have like computer science and IT experience have been doing a lot of work on this. Ryan and I did a video where I was talking about various ways that people can avoid gen AI. Cause that's the thing people think. "Well, it's inevitable." That's that's what Opet said, by the way. They said we have to do all this GenaI bullshit because it's inevitable.

William: Inevitable just like NFTs. They're the future, know. "Listen, I spent three million dollars on a monkey JPEG for years back. It's going to come up anytime now!

Kim: I buy a lot of games on Steam, Linux by the way, of course. If I had Windows on my computer, even as a virtual machine, I think I would panic at this point. And I've made a personal policy now, if I can afford to do so, I will buy games from indie developers when there's assurance on the Steam page that there's no Genai used and I do have the money to buy the game, which is...an issue these days sometimes. But if your game has like even the lightest even we use GENAI to brainstorm kind of bullshit, and they thank goodness at least Steam makes developers mention this on the pages for games. They have to pull down to see it. So, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is one of the most critically acclaimed indie games that came out in the past year. And I was all gung-ho for it because it's a proper turn-based RPG. But then when I learned that their third-party contractor used some GenAI placeholders or textures or whatever, I was like, okay. My personal policy now is if a game has extremely minor GenAI, I don't care if I've come into millions of dollars. I'm pirating that game if I want to play it.

If there is noticeable mode GenAI, I won't even play it. Piracy, buying it legally, off the table. And I will only buy games from small grassroots indie developers who don't have a, we use GenAI warning on their Steam page.

William: Yeah, my advice would be much the same as theirs. Vote with your wallet. Every dollar you don't spend on Gen AI junk, makes the bubble pop a little sooner.

Kim: And yeah, get, get windows off your computer. Like ASAP, it is spying on you.

Ryan: Go to our website and we'll show you how to avoid. Like we want to help you do this. We, we think that this is a thing that we can do that we can really, like William said, help pop this bubble quicker. Right? Because if big tech loses all of its clientele. You know, if everybody switches to Linux, you know, which I know is not possible, but like it is really.

Kim: Also you, unfortunately, because capitalism affects everything. Some Linux distros are like little indie projects by broke nerds who are doing it for fun as a hobby. But other Linux distros are owned by big corporations like IBM. IBM was very useful to Adolf Hitler back in the day. And IBM owns two Linux distros Red Hat and Fedora, and they are shoving GenAI into Red Hat and Fedora. And those are two of the most widely used Linux distros in the enterprise market. I specialize in enterprise cybersecurity. I've consulted in that area professionally. I've been a professor in that area. Any consulting gigs I get for enterprise cybersecurity, now I'm going to say, Migrate off of Red Hat ASAP and a lot of servers are hosted on Red Hat. So that's a major operation of place.

BJ: Let me ask real quick uh because we generally will push people to Ubuntu, even though system 76 is the most secure. Do you have a particular Linux operating system that you prefer people switch to from Windows?

Kim: I've heard really good things about elementary. Elementary's UI is based on the Mac OS UI, so it's it's extra good for people who are migrating from Mac OS, so everything's natural to them, right? But that's not why I recommend elementary OS. I recommend elementary OS because they have made it clear that they refuse to have anything GenAI related in their distro.. Yeah, but my PC has Ubuntu on it though.

William: OK, I'm a fan of Linux Mint. If you're coming from Windows, it is very similar to Windows, so it makes the transition process super easy.

BJ: All right, so before we go William, where can we check out your social network, and I will give Kim and Ryan the chance to plug everything.

William: Hey, I appreciate you giving me a moment to be a shameless shill here. Yeah, so my website is havensocial.org, we're going to be posting our Kickstarter there. Right now you can sign up for like an email list. Of course, we're never going to like share or sell your email to anyone, obviously. It's a shame I have to even specify that. But you can check out the website. It'll let you get updated when our Kickstarter launches. And when we're using the Kickstarter to fund development and to buy the pricey graphics cards we need to do this at scale.

If you were to throw us a few bucks on our Kickstarter, there's some pretty cool rewards we can get you for it. You'll definitely be ... definitely get something cool out of it. So check out our website, havensocial.org. And you know, while you're on the internet, there's a pretty good book I've heard of recently, How to Protect Yourself from Fascists and Weirdos. The author is a pretty cool guy. should go look at the store page for that.

BJ: It's coming. It's coming. We're like a month behind, but I promise it is coming.

Kim: I'll plug kimcrawley.com, which is where all my professional stuff goes. I got to make an entry on there about my new book. stopgenai.com. But I highly recommend going to havensocial.com and signing up for the email list there because that's how you'll find out when the Kickstarter campaign launches.

William: Oh, yeah. If you care about protecting yourself from facial recognition surveillance, protecting your art from AI generators and sabotaging them back, finally getting a chance for revenge to go on the offense and just avoiding your opinions and your beliefs and your children from being influenced by like sneaky billionaires and hostile nations. Check us out.

BJ: Ryan, is there anything you want to the plug?

Ryan: Just StopGenAI.com, man. StopGENAI.com. Like I said, we are in the membership drive right now. Man, we are actively courting people that are in the situation that we are in to come help us, help you, help yourselves.

DuckDuckGo Live Read

Rosie: You know, it used to be we would recommend you use a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, only for specific circumstances. 

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Our goal at Stupid Sexy Privacy is to teach you how to protect yourself from fascists and weirdos.

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Stupid Sexy Privacy Outro

Rosie: This episode of Stupid Sexy Privacy was recorded in Hollywood, California.

It was written by BJ Mendelson, produced by Andrew VanVoorhis, and hosted by me, Rosie Tran.

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