The TESCREAL to fascism pipeline with Adrienne Williams from the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)

About this episode

The episode discusses the TESCREAL movement and its implications for technology and society with Adrienne Williams.

Reading about TESCREAL feels like reading a bad sci-fi storyline written by a man with a god complex. Unfortunately, it’s real: a movement that allows its proponents to use the threat of human extinction to justify expensive or harmful projects and demand billions of dollars to save us from these "existential threats". Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? These are very real aspirations, and some of the tech billionaires setting the rules of the tech industry even call themselves “creators”. It’s worse than godfather, if you ask me, though it’s fairly close. We’ve seen it for example with OpenAI asking for billions to “save us” from the very AI systems they are still trying to build, somehow, and more generally AI gurus working on how to save us from killer robots or AI systems becoming conscious instead of addressing hunger, homelessness, inequalities, or, environmental issues in their country (even just in their city would have more of an impact than stealing money under the excuse of saving people who don’t exist yet from evil AI systems that also don’t exist yet). But it’s not about helping, or “AI for Humanity” as they like to call it: it’s about power, influence and money. And the…

People in this episode

Host: Mélissa

Guest: Adrienne Williams

Topics covered

• TESCREAL
• fascism
• AI ethics
• neocolonialism
• policymaking
• technology influence

Keywords

• TESCREAL
• fascism
• AI
• neocolonialism
• policymaking
• technology
• existential threats

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Distributed AI Research Institute, OpenAI

More episodes of Activists Of Tech — The responsible tech podcast

• Democratic governance of technology: myth or reality ? With Dr Mar Hicks from the University of Virginia School of Data Science · November 3, 2025 · 27 min
• Back to basics: Technofascism 101 with Emile Dirks from the Citizen Lab · September 16, 2025 · 28 min
• The datafication of refugees: humanitarian agencies & biometrics with Zara Rahman from the Superrr Lab · February 18, 2025 · 36 min
• Mapping for justice: from cartography to GIS, with Cathy Richards from the Open Environmental Data Project · February 7, 2025 · 38 min
• How MyBranz fights fake online reviews to save the planet — and your wallet with Janani Kumar, Founder of MyBranz · January 31, 2025 · 24 min
• Quit Clicking Kids: protecting child influencers through policy with Chris McCarty, founder of Quit Clicking Kids · January 24, 2025 · 30 min