A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #470 - FOR A LIBERTARIAN CRITIQUE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. The Order of Algorithms (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Science fiction writers, especially North American ones, have devoted 
themselves to mapping the future of the West and the world, even 
building behavioral models of mechanical devices, most notably Isaac 
Asimov and his positronic robots. Finally, we're there: Asimov's 
centralized Multivac has transformed into Artificial Intelligence 
algorithms, and these are already moving toward merging into a single 
digital mind. And there's not much to be happy about... The advent of 
Artificial Intelligence, in fact, represents not a simple technical 
innovation, but a profound restructuring of productive forces and modes 
of social control, as well as, obviously, the way we investigate and 
learn. Computational potential and cognitive automation could, in a 
society free from exploitation and violence, relieve humanity of the 
burden of labor and expand the boundaries of shared knowledge. 
Unfortunately, within the capitalist trap, this technology is morphing 
into its opposite: a powerful device for the centralization of power, 
mass surveillance, and existential precarity. The real danger is not the 
science fiction dystopia of a rebel machine, like Skynet in the 
Terminator films, but the everyday reality of algorithms produced and 
used by Silicon Valley monopolies and state apparatuses to regulate 
work, shape consensus, and automate material and cognitive warfare.
It is within this scenario of radical transformation that Leo XIV's 
encyclical Magnifica Humanitas fits. Leo XIV, himself a mathematician 
but also with field experience in Latin America, demonstrates, within 
the limits of his beliefs, surprising clarity in denouncing 
technological hypocrisy, demystifying the idea that AI is a neutral 
tool. The Pope, it must be acknowledged, deserves credit for 
highlighting how technology incorporates precise power relations and 
economic interests from its very design, forcefully denouncing the 
danger of "digital slavery," launching the call to "disarm" AI, freeing 
it from monopolies to make it "habitable," proposing a global 
"educational alliance" to curb social isolation and prevent automated 
systems from reducing individuals to mere profit data, loudly demanding 
that human judgments remain supreme-all clearly in keeping with his 
worldview: the traditional family, home and church! However, the 
encyclical falls into the usual dead end of moralism and delegation: the 
belief that the technological monster can be tamed through ethical 
appeals to governments and severe state or supranational regulations. 
The papal vision remains clinging to the utopia of a capitalism with a 
human face and a state understood as a benevolent guardian. For us 
libertarians, this is dangerously naive: the state is not a neutral 
arbiter capable of imposing the common good, but rather capital's main 
business committee, hungry for those same algorithms to refine police 
control, border management, and the rationalization of domination.
Asking the state to regulate the algorithm is asking the jailer to make 
the cell more comfortable; and imposed regulation is never a shield for 
the citizen, but rather the legal enclosure within which power 
institutionalizes its surveillance practices.
The glaring proof of this institutional hypocrisy is the recent Italian 
law on AI, complemented by the package of implementing decrees recently 
approved by the Council of Ministers. Behind the usual smokescreen of 
"human protection" and formal alignment with the European Union's AI 
Act, it effectively opens the door to state biometric control. Under the 
guise of "exceptions for national security and public order," police 
forces are given the green light to use real-time and a posteriori 
facial recognition. This is a dangerous move that bypasses the already 
lax European Union guidelines and draws heavy criticism for the risk of 
transforming public spaces into a perpetual digital panopticon. The 
bureaucratic guarantees promised by the government, such as the police 
commissioner's request or judicial authorization, are merely an 
anesthetic: the reality is the legalization of a digital apparatus 
capable of tracking and cataloging the bodies and identities of 
dissidents, marginalized individuals, and anyone who dares disturb the 
peace of capital. Indeed, for those who haven't noticed, the requirement 
for digital identity cards is completing the process of centralizing the 
population's sensitive data in private hands, including mandatory POS 
terminals for every transaction and even the ability to withdraw taxes 
directly from bank accounts, as is already the case with state employees 
and pensioners.
Furthermore, this algorithmic authoritarianism isn't limited to what 
happens on the streets, but aims to colonize the imagination and 
education of new generations through control of social media and direct 
involvement in schools.
Italian law mandates the massive introduction of AI into teaching, 
starting in elementary and high schools, touting it as modernization and 
"digital well-being." However, under the guise of personalized learning 
and technological literacy, it conceals a profound domestication agenda. 
The use of automatic systems to assess student performance or guide 
their educational paths introduces predictive classification from 
childhood, branding individuals based on behavioral standards 
established by private software companies, demoting schools from places 
of social interaction, conflict, and critical growth to training 
laboratories, where teachers become mere platform operators and students 
become involuntary providers of behavioral data. This is the triumph of 
instrumental rationality: accustoming young people to obedience to the 
invisible authority of the algorithm, normalizing continuous monitoring 
as a natural condition of existence.
What, then, should we do from a libertarian perspective? The answer 
cannot be nostalgic Luddism or a retreat into sterile primitivism, much 
less the expectation of a digital welfare system granted from above and 
freely manageable. The challenge lies in reappropriation and 
self-management: it is necessary to sabotage the logic of proprietary 
code and challenge the state surveillance apparatus through the 
development and support of federated digital infrastructures, free 
software, strong encryption, and self-managed networks outside of state 
and corporate control. We must free collective knowledge and data from 
the control of private property, practicing technological objection in 
schools and the self-management of knowledge in communities. Only by 
breaking the techno-political monopoly and placing technology back in 
the hands of self-managed communities can we transform algorithms from 
tools of control and oppression into vehicles of social emancipation and 
libertarian solidarity.

Emanuele Amodio

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