Crawford’s concluding remark on this panel was that Europe has a clear choice when it comes to AI: to passively acquiesce to American techbro hegemony or to actively refuse AI. As she put it bluntly, accept or fight!
Put plainly, for Europe to succeed in realizing its most impactful contributions to the planetary computational stack, it must stop talking itself out of advancement and instead cultivate a new philosophy of computation that invents the concepts needed to compose the world, not just deconstruct it or preserve it like a relic.
I’m trying to figure out how to use generative AI as a designer without feeling like shit. I am fascinated with what it can do, impressed and repulsed by what it makes, and distrustful of its owners. I am deeply ambivalent about it all. The believers demand devotion, the critics demand abstinence, and to see AI as just another technology is to be a... See more
The Slowdown is also a collective of editors, writers, photographers, filmmakers, producers, creative directors, and strategists who work on special projects for major companies and brands, from a podcast series with soundproof booth company ROOM to a short documentary film for Van Cleef & Arpels and a book with Molteni (as featured in PIN–UP 37).
A confusing contradiction is unfolding in companies embracing generative AI tools: while workers are largely following mandates to embrace the technology, few are seeing it create real value.