US-led AI destroys democracy, creates a fascist system—rise of far right groups in the US intensify

The most immediate impact of A.I. that might reinforce the feudalistic tendencies of the digital space is to create a production system mimicking corporatism - namely, the reconfiguration of power relations through sectoral alliances between coder syndicates and guilds. This would entail the control of algorithm-building and maintaining structures that both state and private actors rely on, and the foundation of the future economic system. The corporatization of A.I. could reinforce power-centralization through the combination of corporations that monopolize modes of code and coder production that will disproportionately influence politics, military and science affairs. This will effectively generate a feudal network that minimizes political participation and representation, leading to the eradication of democracy. The Habermasian ‘algorithmic enclosures’ that are obscure and inaccessible will establish robust control mechanisms on the society and in turn, empower coder oligarchies and corporations in charge of them. The second alarmist trend in the popular mainstream is the idea that the A.I. will create a ‘fascist system’28 Cyber Governance and Digital Democracy 2018/9 over-centralized A.I.-based decision-making will create a hierarchy of repression in which control-oriented, top-down practices will restrict expression, engagement, oversight and political information-seeking behavior. These fears have been intensified with the rise of the far-right groups in the US and Europe in the last years, bolstered by Internet trolls, fake news, and bots. According to the conceptualization of Foucault29 and Canguilhem30, the way technology and science are deployed by fascist regimes snowball into a social force, bursting their initial utilitarian origins and take on a life of their own. Technologism then determines the bounds of rights and freedoms in a society, becoming the real political ideology in fascist regimes. In ‘techno-fascism,’ all aspects of social life are controlled with the purpose of maximizing scientific progress and technological advances that are in turn, used to exert newer forms of sectoral control over social life. Views that don’t conform or fully converge to the hegemonic ideology are taken out of the equation through imprisonment and death. Totalitarianism is different from authoritarianism in this context since the latter denotes the centralization of political power without the need to control thoughts and actions of all citizens through a revolutionary mechanism to change the human nature or the world at whole. An ‘A.I. fascism’ or totalitarianism, therefore, has to entail a bid to change human relations and social interactions; merely political control and centralization are not enough on their own