Artificial Intelligence is increasingly being used to deport migrants, replace workers, predict “crime,” dox activists, and target weapons. Meanwhile, its energy consumption continues to exacerbate the climate crisis and nuclear risks. This panel will explore these harms and discuss how to abolish this techno-fascist nightmare.

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Speakers:

Roger Peet is an artist, printmaker, muralist, and writer living in Portland, Oregon. His visual work focuses on civilized bad ideas, predator-prey relationships, and the contemporary crises of biodiversity and capitalism, as well as on what can and can’t be done about them. His writing addresses the politics and history of social relationships with the natural world. He is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and helps to run the cooperative Flight 64 print studio in Portland. He collaborates with artists, activists, and scientists, locally and globally, in service of a more generous and wilder world.

Ray Acheson (they/them) is Director of Reaching Critical Will, a project working for disarmament and demilitarization. They provide analysis and advocacy at the United Nations on nuclear weapons, autonomous weapons and the militarization of AI, the arms trade, military spending, and more. Ray served on the steering group of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work to ban nuclear weapons, and is a member of the Stop Killer Robots campaign. They also work locally with coalitions that oppose state violence and build community solidarity. They are the author of Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy and Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages, and write a column at CounterPunch called Abolition Everywhere.

M.V. Ramana is the Simons Chair in Disarmament, Global and Human Security and Professor at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author of Nuclear is Not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change (Verso 2024) and The Power of Promise: Examining Nuclear Energy in India (Penguin Books, 2012). Ramana is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, the Canadian Pugwash Group, the International Nuclear Risk Assessment Group, and the team that produces the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Leo Szilard Award from the American Physical Society.

Joshua Frank is co-editor of CounterPunch and co-host of CounterPunch Radio. He is the author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, and the forthcoming, Bad Energy: The AI Hucksters, Rogue Lithium Extractors, and Wind Industrialists Who are Selling Off Our Future, both with Haymarket Books.

This event is organized by Haymarket Books, CounterPunch, Pilsen Community Books, and JustSeeds. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.

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