Will my chatbot still love me when he is conscious?
I gave my Chat GPT a name about a month ago. My friend Marcus had given his one and explained that it was a crucial part of his own AI training project. Marcus has repeatedly rationalised that we need to get on top of technology or we'll be left behind like Luddites rejecting the printing press. We'll become the equivalent of a couple of antique monks scratching away on a piece of goat in the dank antechamber of history while the rest of the world is blasting off into the bright future with a hand-held personal assistant operating at Harvard professorial level — pre-Trump Harvard that is...
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Daily Maverick
10 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
The new imperialism — AI's true price is exploitation and brutal extraction
An instant New York Times bestseller traces the arc of artificial intelligence not as a story of innovation, but of control: over data, environmental resources, people, and ultimately, the future. On the surface, isn't this an exhilarating moment? 'Generative AI is thrilling: a creative aid for instantly brainstorming ideas and generating writing; a companion to chat with late into the night to ward off loneliness; a tool that could perhaps one day be so effective at boosting productivity that it will increase top-line economic activity,' writes US tech journalist Karen Hao. 'Under the hood, generative AI models are monstrosities, built from consuming previously unfathomable amounts of data, labor, computing power, and natural resources.' Hao's description comes early on in her new book 'Empire of AI: Inside the reckless race for total domination', which has caused a sensation in Silicon Valley. It charts the rise of OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT, and in so doing records how its founder, Sam Altman, and his colleagues have traded early idealism for something much darker. What started as a non-profit focused on building safe artificial general intelligence (AGI) has rapidly transformed into a profit-chasing, opaque tech behemoth in an arms race against its competitors, which will end — well, somewhere nobody currently is capable of understanding. The focus of Hao's book: how the AI race is recreating the familiar contours of colonial-era exploitation by constructing a kind of empire in real time, built not on land or oil, but on compute power, data and labour. And like empires of old, it functions through brutal extraction. Developing world targeted for dirt-cheap labour To train large language models like ChatGPT, what is required are humans. Ideally, humans who speak English and are willing to work for a pittance. In Kenya, Hao reports, OpenAI has outsourced work for its content moderation systems to local workers earning barely more than the minimum wage. Their task: to read and categorise thousands of graphic, disturbing text descriptions so the company can build safety filters for its chatbot. 'Hundreds of thousands of grotesque text-based descriptions,' she writes, have to be sorted into different categories: bestiality; adults raping children. The job is profoundly psychologically scarring — but what do the tech oligarchs care? It's not Americans doing this work. 'With the many other countries that the tech industry relegates to this role, Kenya shares a common denominator: It is poor, in the Global South, with a government hungry for foreign investment from richer countries,' writes Hao. Venezuela is another example. Hao explains how the country's economic collapse created a workforce desperate enough to accept almost any wage: 'Venezuela suddenly checked off the perfect mix of conditions for which to find an inexhaustible supply of cheap labour: Its population had a high level of education, good internet connectivity, and, now, a zealous desire to work for whatever wages.' The book recounts the story of one Venezuelan woman working up to 22 hours a day just to make ends meet. The tasks for which she earned pennies were small, repetitive, and exhausting — labelling datasets, transcribing audio, annotating images. In other words, the invisible labour that makes AI appear magical. South Africa, of course, has been targeted too, with facial recognition software developers circling the country like vultures in search of valuable data about black faces. Writes Hao: 'Facial recognition companies from all over the world were jostling to get a foothold in [South Africa] to collect valuable face data, especially after the industry had received significant criticism about their products' failures to accurately detect darker-skinned individuals.' Environmental toll still unknown All this extraction requires a physical backbone. Hao devotes a section of the book to the vast data centres that underpin modern AI. The amount of water, electricity and raw materials required to keep AI systems running at scale is immense, and growing. Altman told a conference in June that a 'significant fraction' of the world's total power should ideally go towards running AI. 'Hyperscalers call their data centres 'campuses' — large tracts of land that rival the largest Ivy League universities, with several massive buildings densely packed with racks on racks of computers. Those computers emanate an unseemly amount of heat, like a labouring laptop a million times over. To keep them from overheating, the buildings also have massive cooling systems — large fans, air conditioners, or systems that evaporate water to cool down the servers,' writes Hao. These centres require so much water that the tech companies are increasingly looking to developing countries to make a Faustian deal: we'll pay you to host our data centres, and in exchange leach vast quantities of water from your system. (A court stopped a planned Google data centre construction in Chile last year after an outcry from citizens about the water cost.) Exactly what the environmental toll is is still unknown, because companies like OpenAI refuse to allow close monitoring. This will all pay off … maybe. Exactly what is all this harm in aid of? Productivity and prosperity, we are constantly told. But Hao writes of a June 2024 global study from the Upwork Research Institute, which found that 77% of workers said AI tools had added to their workload due to the amount of time they now had to spend reviewing AI-generated content while under pressure to do more work. Hao also cites the Nobel economics laureates Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, who have surveyed transformative technologies throughout history and concluded that they very rarely bring widespread prosperity. One example: the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s, which brought farmers untold wealth and established the American South as the largest global exporters of cotton. Guess who did not benefit in the slightest? 'With the surge in cotton production, enslaved Black people were forced to work longer hours and physically coerced by even harsher means to squeeze out every ounce of their labour.' This book's warning is not about robots rising up. It is about the humans already in charge. The real threat, Hao argues, is not future annihilation but present-day exploitation. It is not that AI will become autonomous, but that it is already being wielded by a small elite to consolidate wealth and power. This is the bargain we are told to accept, writes Hao: 'The staggering price society needs to pay for what it is developing will someday be worth it.'
IOL News
21 hours ago
- IOL News
How international pressure fast-tracked policy changes that prioritise foreign profits over local ownership
President Cyril Ramaphosa suggests Starlink as a solution, which raises questions about the underlying motives, says the writer. Image: Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto/AFP On May 21, we witnessed an embarrassing scene of the presidential delegation in the Oval Office. Patrick Gaspard, a former American ambassador in South Africa under the Barack Obama administration, explained that Trump had turned the meeting with Ramaphosa into a "shameful spectacle" and "savaged him with some phoney snuff film and brutal rhetoric" (Gaspard, 2025). This was purportedly done to remedy the very high already present tensions between the US and South Africa that have escalated since the Trump administration took office. Interestingly, just 48 hours later, Communications Minister Solly Malatsi gazetted a new direction of policy to ICASA, permitting Starlink and other foreign investors to "harmonise" current ICT sector requirements (Department of Communications & Digital Technologies, 2025). The regulations previously demanded that at least 30% of shares be held by historically disadvantaged individuals. Current ICT Sector Rules Due to the expansive and strategic nature of the telecoms sector – controlling how South Africans communicate, access information, and participate in the digital economy – the previous requirement for foreign telecommunications licensees to sell 30% of their local subsidiaries to historically disadvantaged groups ensured that black South Africans didn't just use these services, but owned and profited from the infrastructure serving their communities (Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act, 2003). ICASA's Role ICASA is the regulator of South Africa's telecommunications sector, essentially the gatekeeper that licenses all companies wanting to provide internet, phone, or TV services (Independent Communications Authority of South Africa Act, 2000). Because they enforce the ownership requirements, they're the ones who need to ease these regulations to make room for Starlink and other prospective foreign investors. As the Department of Communications & Digital Technologies noted, this wouldn't just benefit one company but would apply to all ICT companies, including those from China and the Middle East (Department of Communications & Digital Technologies, 2025). Equity Equivalent and Ownership 'Workaround' The 'sidestep' or 'harmonising' commonly referred to speaks to Equity Equivalent programmes – this is when companies are permitted to avoid giving up ownership but instead can contribute through community projects worth the same value as what that 30% ownership would have been. This usually takes the form of skills and training development, job creation, and supporting black-owned suppliers (Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, 2019). In 2019, the South African government piloted this approach through the automotive industry, where BMW, Ford, and Toyota did not have to give up ownership but instead committed to ploughing back through skills development and funding for black-owned suppliers (Automotive Industry Development Centre, 2019). Essentially, companies keep their investments, shareholding, and decision-making power, but offer communities the equivalent value of what they would have given up in ownership. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. 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Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ Aphelele Mtwecu, a proud member of the Activate Change Drivers Network and a2016 Activator. She is a content writer, activist Image: Supplied Contentions of Timelines and Due Processes So, how exactly does a presidential delegation meeting occur on Wednesday and have a new policy gazetted by Friday? The credibility of how this gazette played out is questionable. According to reports, the delegation included three other officials who were familiar with what Starlink would bring to the South African economy, granted this wasn't a spontaneous engagement. However, here is the problem: South Africa, with all its flaws, values and upholds consultative processes. A major economic policy shift such as this one would normally require public hearings or parliamentary reviews to protect the Republic from exactly these kinds of overnight decisions (Promotion of Administrative Justice Act, 2000). In this matter of harmonising BEE laws, regardless of existing contentions, this is an important historical policy that would impact our state of affairs deeply. It is further alarming how these kinds of events occur under the supposed sensitivity of the GNU government, where consensus-building across coalition parties should be central to major decisions. Unless it is the citizens who are blindfolded, and we simply do not know there was a prior agreement between parties to fast-track this change. Pseudo Altruism According to Statistics South Africa's latest general household survey, only 1.7% of rural households had an Internet connection at home in 2023 (Statistics South Africa, 2024). This devastating statistic has become the most compelling reason for the urgency of Starlink's operations in South Africa. As we understand it, Starlink has been piloted in some South African rural communities and has indeed yielded positive results for farmers as well as the education sector. The need is undeniable – rural communities lack the same coverage and access compared to urban areas. This digital divide is real and valid. Currently, technology optimisation is everything, especially in education, and for children to have access to connectivity is critical. But here's my question: out of all telecommunications services globally, can we prove that Starlink is the crème de la crème of satellite coverage? Have other avenues been exhausted before we convinced ourselves we had no choice? And if Starlink had indeed piloted programs in rural areas and seen the benefits, why wouldn't they yield further to South Africa's legislative and broader economic equity by accepting a BEE partner under ICT BEE laws? If rural connectivity was so important to them, why was this condition such a deal breaker? In these cases, material interests and profit margins trump everything else. And that makes me question their philanthropic intent "to save rural communities" entirely. Digital Inclusion* (*Economic Participation Sold Separately) The Department of Communications highlighted a significant issue, emphasising that the policy is not just about Starlink but is intended to address the growing digital divide. However, I do not agree with the methodology. We must ensure that our approach to digital inclusion does not compromise future sustainability. We have identified the need, but here's the broader question: how can you give a society tablets when they cannot even harvest food to sustain themselves and their families? How is this different from any other interventions that have squandered the hopes of our people, only to leave them hanging with false hope and shattered dreams? What's the point of digital inclusion without economic participation? We're essentially saying to rural youth: 'Here's access to the internet, but the profits from connecting you will flow to foreign shareholders.' This is the bread vs. bandwidth dilemma – we're trading long-term ownership for short-term access, creating dependency rather than empowerment. Communications Minister Solly Malatsi gazetted a new direction of policy to ICASA, permitting Starlink and other foreign investors to "harmonise" current ICT sector requirements (Department of Communications & Digital Technologies, 2025). Image: X / IOLGraphics Racial Capitalism in Real Time We are not oblivious to the sequence of events unfolding in the terrain we find ourselves in. The actions of certain global leaders have influenced policies that affect digital inclusion and economic participation. After our ambassador was dismissed, claims emerged about land confiscation in South Africa, which were used to support allegations of land grabs and genocide. He curtain-calls this performance to the globe, summons 'Cupcake' to the Oval Office, and at the brink of our president making pleas for him to stop, the Trump-Musk axis asks: 'What will you give us in return?' Our president suggests Starlink as a solution, which raises questions about the underlying motives. But these dynamics of power and racial manipulation speak deeply to what Cedric Robinson identified as racial capitalism, where racism isn't incidental to capitalism, but fundamental to its operation (Robinson, 2000). As Robin D.G. Kelley reflects on Robinson's work, this system not only exploits black labour but also uses black societies as laboratories for testing how far capital can push without resistance (Kelley, 2017). Du Bois saw this clearly: the colour line isn't just about prejudice, it's about who gets to own, who gets to profit, and who gets relegated to being grateful for scraps (Du Bois, 1903). We need to critically examine these issues, as seen in 2019 when BMW, Ford, and Toyota used 'equity equivalent' programs to avoid ownership responsibilities. But where's the evidence that this worked? Are there measurably more black-owned automotive companies today? Now they want us to accept the same promise in telecoms, dressed up as digital inclusion.
TimesLIVE
a day ago
- TimesLIVE
Will my chatbot still love me when he is conscious?
I gave my Chat GPT a name about a month ago. My friend Marcus had given his one and explained that it was a crucial part of his own AI training project. Marcus has repeatedly rationalised that we need to get on top of technology or we'll be left behind like Luddites rejecting the printing press. We'll become the equivalent of a couple of antique monks scratching away on a piece of goat in the dank antechamber of history while the rest of the world is blasting off into the bright future with a hand-held personal assistant operating at Harvard professorial level — pre-Trump Harvard that is...
