Trump Brings Oligarch Posse To China; The Artificial Inevitability of AI w/ Alex Hanna | MR Live

Trump's visit to China, accompanied by CEOs from Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and Boeing, is framed as a negotiation but primarily serves to secure deals for these corporations, particularly Boeing and agricultural sectors. This approach contradicts the "America First" brand by benefiting specific corporate interests rather than broad US manufacturing. Meanwhile, China's strategic position is strengthened by its energy independence, achieved through massive investments in renewables, contrasting sharply with the US's continued reliance on fossil fuels and policies that actively sabotage green energy projects.

Trump arrived in China flanked by Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and Jensen Huang (Nvidia), with Boeing expected to secure a major deal. China's CO2 emissions have been flat or falling for 21 months, with solar power output increasing by 43% and wind by 14%, while its energy storage capacity outpaces demand. The US, under Trump, cancelled offshore wind leases, paying Total Energies $1 billion.

Sociologist Alex Hanna argues that "AI" is largely a marketing term used to rebrand existing technologies and create a false sense of inevitability. Chatbots, for instance, are intentionally engineered to mimic human conversation, fostering an illusion of sentience that makes them appear capable of replacing complex human labor. This narrative is pushed by tech companies and celebrity investors to drive adoption and justify investments, despite the technologies not being highly profitable on their own.

Hanna states, "AI is a marketing term. Everything's getting called AI these days." She explains that chatbot interfaces are "engineered features" designed for "higher amount of adoption" by making users "anthropomorphize" the technology.

AI technologies are designed to replace human labor, particularly in fields disproportionately held by women (secretarial, transcription) and in creative industries like animation, graphic design, and writing. The illusion of AI's capabilities allows companies to cut costs by reducing human staff, even if the AI-generated output requires significant human correction. This process undermines the relational and skilled aspects of these jobs, leading to widespread job displacement and devaluing artistic craft.

Hanna notes that AI labor replacement targets work "disproportionately by women" and that "so much work [is] drying up there for concept designers, for people who are graphic designers, for anybody doing that really hard grunt work." Animators report that software companies promote AI tools that "get rid of the process drawing etc entirely which is actually what producers and clients want so they can hire less people."

The "AI safety" movement, which focuses on hypothetical existential risks like machines killing humanity, is largely funded by billionaires (e.g., Elon Musk) and serves as a red herring. This focus diverts policy attention and resources away from immediate, tangible harms caused by AI, such as environmental pollution from data centers, labor oppression, the spread of non-consensual intimate imagery, and the poisoning of the information ecosystem.

Hanna explains that the AI safety community focuses on "the extinction of all humanity" and is "largely funded by a certain other set of billionaires." She states, "The thing that AI safety does is it really distracts from actual real policy intervention on current harms including things around polluting the information ecosystem, environmental issues, labor displacement."

There is significant and bipartisan grassroots opposition to the construction of data centers across the US due to their massive consumption of water and electricity, noise pollution, and the generation of harmful chemicals. Developers strategically place these centers in areas with favorable tax breaks and sympathetic policymakers, often leading to environmental racism where marginalized communities bear the brunt of the pollution.

A Gallup poll shows 7 out of 10 Americans oppose a data center built near them, with 56% of Democrats and 39% of Republicans strongly opposing. Hanna cites a case in Memphis where a data center project (Colossus) is polluting a 99% Black area with 35 methane generators. In Georgia, a 17-billion-dollar data center project was approved despite fierce local opposition over power demand and proximity to schools.