Our leaders care more about the cult of machines than voters' concerns
Something strange is happening in Westminster. New money is working in mysterious new ways – and Labour is in thrall to it.
In exchange for destroying copyright markets worth some £125bn to the UK, Labour has been promised some magic beans: once artificial intelligence companies are free to effectively steal any British creativity they want and copy it, they will move here and we will be happy again.
Last week our newspapers synchronised their front pages to warn against watered down copyright rules, while top British artists including Kate Bush and Damon Albarn released an album of recordings of empty studios and concert halls to protest against the proposed changes.
Destroying copyright to appease the Gods of AI is a very strange thing to do. Many in the creative industries are lifelong Labour voters, or were until now; musicians are even represented on Labour's National Executive Committee.
No one else in the world is doing anything like this. As a result, not only are some intellectual property-based companies (and hefty taxpayers) now making plans to leave the UK, but the Government may also find itself dragged through the international courts, using powers reserved for rogue, pirate states.
That's something the Prime Minister, a human rights lawyer, might care about, but I suspect no one has told him yet. And why would this be?
Here's a clue.
Listeners to BBC Radio 4's Today programme last week heard support for the Government's plans come from a 24-year-old, Julia Willemyns, founder of a think tank that's barely six months old. Willemyns proceeded to lecture Ed Newton Rex – the composer and AI entrepreneur behind the silent album – on how copyright really works.
Children educating adults? It's reminiscent of Mao's Cultural Revolution, which cynically stoked up intergenerational conflict. Funnily enough, Willemyns's think tank also has a sinister Maoist vibe: it's called 'UK Day One'.
Willemyns made some dubious claims that the BBC allowed to go unchallenged. She cited Japan as a model, which is odd. Japan made it easier for AI models to ingest copyright material in 2018 but now has buyer's remorse.
Artists are furious, and the loophole may well be plugged up again. The flood of AI start-ups that Japan hoped for never appeared and they won't spring up here either, because businesses in Britain pay some of the highest electricity prices in the world. That's because AI uses a huge amount of electricity.
Where does this strain of cult-like, techno-utopian thinking come from that wants to do away with copyright and empower machines? It evolved from very intense 'rationalist' online forums a decade ago such as Less Wrong, where poorly socialised economics and psychology nerds jostled for status. The blogger Scott Alexander, one of the leading lights, suggested they should call themselves 'the Grey Tribe', signalling a disdain for traditional left and right – or red and blue – politics.
Many signed up to a peculiar philosophy called effective altruism (EA), which argues that charity shouldn't be about doing what makes you feel or look good but what generates the best outcomes most effectively.
While it sounds reasonable enough, its supporters pursue whacky preoccupations ranging from fantasies about a killer artificial intelligence to extending animal rights to insects. Some of EA's supporters are hugely wealthy and have used their largess to extend the influence of these ideas. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz is the biggest EA funder and helped bring Willemyns's UK Day One into existence with a £150,000 grant from his Open Philanthropy charity.
To understand Labour's thinking we should also look to Matt Clifford, a government adviser. He steered Rishi Sunak's AI summit towards the theme of 'safety' – yes, those killer AIs again – which ultimately empowered the big Silicon Valley players as they successfully argued only significant players like themselves could be trusted to police the risks. Labour appointed Clifford; he then obligingly recommended the copyright changes.
Another influential source of funding for anti-copyright ideas is an attempt to invent a new field called 'Progress Studies', an initiative that also sprouted out of the nerd forums. It was devised by Stripe founder Patrick Collinson and Tyler Cowen, an economics blogger and professor. Emergent Ventures, a scheme that Cowen helps to administer, has dispensed grants to more than 800 people and organisations.
Without these two strands of thought, Effective Altruism and Progressive Studies, some policy phenomena such as 'Yimby' would not even exist. Nor would the 'Crush Crime' venture, furiously promoted by Dominic Cummings, which hasn't crushed very much crime, but has harvested a lot of emails.
Supporters are aiming to create a movement. As Cowen himself explained recently: 'It would never be such a formal thing or controlled or managed or directed by a small group of people or trademarked. It would be people doing things in a very decentralised way that would reflect a general change of ethos and vibe.'
Here's why all this matters.
These groups have such a narrow concept of what 'progress' means. The rationalists get too fixated on things they think might accelerate progress – mainly artificial intelligence – and are indifferent or hostile to things and people who they perceive as inhibiting it.
So older people, strong national borders and boundaries – a property right like copyright protection is a boundary – are all regarded in the same way that Scientologists view their critics: as 'suppressives'.
But what kind of progress involves the destruction of markets for creative work? It is not progress at all but a regression to pre-Enlightenment times, when artists had to beg for their supper. It also paves the way for a creepy, post-human world: Cowen himself has said the 'bottleneck to progress is human beings'.
This is where a bewildered Labour Party finds itself today, along with much of Tory wonkdom – and none of them really realises how they got here. Machine cults have replaced the very human concerns and needs of voters.
For Labour, a political party founded on strong Christian beliefs that the weak shall inherit the Earth, this has been quite a journey.
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