AI Infrastructures, Total Mobilisation and Decomputing

This chapter examines the broad impact of AI infrastructures on the possibility of sustainable social and ecological relations. It problematises these infrastructures not only in terms of energy demand but as a degradation of labour and social relations, and highlights the ways in which AI itself fails to deliver on its claims. Identifying the driving principle of ‘scale’ as central to these problems, it positions AI infrastructures with the wider frame of growth ideology. Addressing the contradictions between AI’s harmful fallibilities and the vast investments of financial and political capital in its infrastructures, the chapter offers Ernst Jünger’s concept of ‘total mobilisation’ as a way to grasp the underlying, epochal dynamics. This framing also helps to explain the observable overlap between Silicon Valley’s own ideologies and the rise of far right political forces. The chapter proposes the idea of ‘decomputing’ as a counter to the cumulative harms of AI infrastructures. It develops the concept of decomputing in relation to ideas of degrowth and de-automatisation, and suggests some practical steps forward based on the collective adoption of convivial technologies.