Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

[tante@tldr.nettime.org]

Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.

That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.

[tante@tldr.nettime.org]

By ignoring the "master" part in the quote it is reduced to something one can cutesily brush aside: But it's not about appropriating someone's screwdriver. It's about whether you think you can appropriate his torture device.

[trisweb@m.trisweb.com]

@tante or whether doing so would have any value or meaning as a method of building up rather than their original intent.

This is insightful, thank you.

[sharpcheddargoblin@kolektiva.social]

@tante The People's Torment Nexus. 🙃

[haverholm@radikal.social]

@tante ...or exploitation device. I guess you also have the "leftist AI" proposals in the back of your mind talking about this?

[diffrentcolours@tech.lgbt]

@tante This is why I hate talk about "good" uses of #LLM / #GenAI technology.

Those tools are rooted in harm, whether it's theft of creative works, exploitation of developing world labour, or abuse of scarce resources. You can't use them without being complicit in that harm, no matter how noble your cause.

[nicovel0@mastodon.social]

@SharpCheddarGoblin @tante the Torment Nexus Foundation is dedicated to developing fully free and open source torment nexi

[tante@tldr.nettime.org]

@haverholm it was mostly sparked by a blog post I read but applies perfectly to those proposals, yes.

[haverholm@radikal.social]

@tante Yeah, I see people in the left who are quite happy to ignore that "AI" is literally trained without consent or compensation on generations' work...

I don't care how many hammer and sickle memes they generate, they're still exploiting the labour of others. Same tools, there's just another master behind them.

[light@noc.social]

@tante @flancian I've heard that saying applied to the practise of logic and reason. Obviously a screwdriver rather than a torture device.

[c0dec0dec0de@hachyderm.io]

@tante yeah, not one of the subtooted’s best blog posts; and this is an excellent point/rebuttal.

[v_d_richards@literatur.social]

@diffrentcolours @tante

This!

This is the same ethical dilemma as if one would build housing for the poor with the labor of slaves.
It remains sn immoral act no matter the purpose.

The housing must be build by fairly paid, free workers and then it can be used.
Otherwise one the world is not bettered by the action, but worsened.

[npars01@mstdn.social]

@tante

The same arguments are used to thwart public safety on guns. Disingenuous "People kill people, not guns".

AI is a net negative.

1. It wastes fossil fuel & worsens climate change. It pushes up gas prices, electricity & water rates.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/electricity-price-data-center-ai-inflation-goldman.html

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-energy-industry-ai-fossil-fuels-pittsburgh-summit/

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ai-companies-data-centers-electricity-trump-administration-df665913

https://www.desmog.com/2025/12/11/the-koch-network-is-pushing-trump-to-accelerate-ai-documents-show/

2. It's used to automate information pollution & cyberwarfare, like covid disinformation & election meddling by hostile foreign powers like Putin

1/

[npars01@mstdn.social]

2/

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/03/how-cognitive-manipulation-and-ai-will-shape-disinformation-in-2026/

https://www.ft.com/content/ceb33440-e0bd-46da-9be0-d4ac27d5a19a
https://archive.is/lpbdh

Accusations are confessions
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/trump-accuses-iran-using-ai-spread-disinformation-2026-03-16/

3. It's funded by soulless people like Koch, Putin, #PrinceBonesaw, Elon Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel who want a technofascist aristocracy, not democracy
https://www.politico.com/video/2016/02/donald-trump-i-love-the-poorly-educated-044575

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2025/07/17/bill-gates-charles-koch-and-three-other-billionaires-are-giving-1-billion-to-enhance-economic-mobility-in-the-us/

https://unherd.com/newsroom/does-marc-andreessen-have-a-soul/?edition=us

https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/kleiner-perkins-andreessen-horowitz-lead-investment-1-billion-neolab

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/16/europe/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-rome-intl

https://jacobin.com/2026/03/thiel-epstein-barak-ai-israel

https://americanbazaaronline.com/2026/03/17/peter-thiel-criticizes-the-giving-pledge-steers-billionaires-477004/

[npars01@mstdn.social]

3/

4. It's used for mass layoffs, rent & price fixing, & wage suppression
https://theconversation.com/tech-companies-are-blaming-massive-layoffs-on-ai-whats-really-going-on-278314

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/16/meta-ai-costs-mass-layoffs-20percent-up-premarket.html

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/atlassian-ai-layoffs

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/08/block-ai-layoffs-jack-dorsey

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/02/26/ai-mass-layoffs/88888700007/

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-odd-settlement-on-rent-fixing

https://jacobin.com/2025/12/realpage-ai-rent-raising-lawsuit

https://www.levernews.com/tech-giant-says-ai-has-a-first-amendment-right-to-raise-your-rent/

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/states-target-ai-that-tells-companies-how-much-to-pay-workers

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/washington-post-price-ai

https://globalnews.ca/video/11734019/meta-reportedly-planning-mass-layoffs-to-offset-ai-costs

https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/laptop-prices-expected-to-soar-by-around-40-percent-as-ai-crunch-takes-hold-analyst-says-rising-mainstream-models-priced-at-usd900-could-hit-more-than-usd1-200-due-to-rising-memory-storage-and-cpu-costs

https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/05/12/the-gig-trap/algorithmic-wage-and-labor-exploitation-in-platform-work-in-the-us

https://futurism.com/freelancers-struggling-compete-ai

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/19/uber-lawsuit-ai-driven-pay-systems

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/article/block-lays-off-nearly-half-its-staff-because-of-ai-its-ceo-said-most-companies-will-do-the-same/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/salesforce-ceo-confirms-4-000-layoffs-because-i-need-less-heads-with-ai/ar-AA1LKqBS

[npars01@mstdn.social]

4/

5. It's used for fraud, scams, stock market manipulation, & war crimes

https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2025-09-27-econopocalypse-subprime-intelligence-e9a06136d109

https://slate.com/technology/2025/02/ed-zitron-interview-big-tech-ai-criticism.html

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/28/nvidia-insists-it-isnt-enron-but-its-ai-deals-are-testing-investor-faith

https://m.economictimes.com/magazines/panache/mit-study-shatters-ai-hype-95-of-generative-ai-projects-are-failing-sparking-tech-bubble-jitters/articleshow/123428252.cms

https://www.readtpa.com/p/the-man-calling-bullshit-on-the-ai

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-beginning-of-history/

https://www.wheresyoured.at/why-are-we-still-doing-this/

https://newrepublic.com/article/207189/iran-war-ai-deciding-bombs-drop

6. It's used to destroy privacy, erode civil rights, & enact state surveillance
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/omnipresent-ai-cameras-will-ensure-good-behavior-says-larry-ellison/

https://www.techpolicy.press/how-ice-uses-ai-to-automate-authoritarianism/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/viral-ai-ice-raid-videos_l_69163baee4b0df3e16be4163

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ice-agents-caught-wearing-meta-ai-smart-glasses-record-monitor-communities-during-immigration-1784703

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/02/07/ai-texas-ice-mn-tech

[npars01@mstdn.social]

5/

In any technology, power imbalances play an important role.

As Cory Doctorow points out, it's a form of brain damage to deny the role power plays in economics. Ditto for AI.

https://inthesetimes.com/article/ice-deportation-machine-surveillance-artificial-intelligence-thomson-reuters-clear-trump

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/14/ai-chatbots-psychosis

https://theweek.com/world-news/grok-eu-deepfake-porn-probe-elon-musk-ai

https://www.thefp.com/p/grok-is-making-porn-from-peoples-pictures

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2026/jan/13/governments-taking-action-on-grok-due-to-ai-genera/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/02/02/elon-musk-grok-porn-generator/

[sakhavi@aoir.social]

@tante In the conflict between Lorde's quote and Ani Difranco's "Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right," Difranco's insight wins every time. If UX has taught nothing else throughout its history, it has taught that users always subvert tools in ways their developers could never expect. This goes double for digital tools given their abstraction: E.g. databases have a horrible, genocidal early history, but most liberatory projects use them today.

[mro@digitalcourage.social]

Hi @tante
https://archive.org/details/illich-conviviality is what we need more.

[alter_kaker@hachyderm.io]

@tante I think that Lourde's central insight here is that tool use changes the user and to some degree determines what it's used for. We see this in the cognitive impact of LLM tools, in revolutionary violence leading to the reestablishment of similar structures of oppression it was originally meant to fight, etc etc.

As the old saying goes, if all you have is a hammer...