For the closing meetup of the ARTIVISM programme, we invite artists, technologists, activists and investigative journalists to take active part in a guided debate on AI Doomerism and human extinction with the philosopher and scholar Emile P. Torres, one of the most vehement critics of longtermism. As a new moral philosophy gaining popularity in Silicon Valley with backers like Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried, longtermism suggests prioritising an immensely larger future human population over the current billions, by focusing and channeling massive funds on the needs of trillions of potential future individuals rather than the immediate needs of those currently alive.

Torres is author of the book “Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation”, published by Routledge this year. Over the past many months, they helped popularize the acronym “TESCREAL” to denote a constellation of ideologies that have become enormously influential within Silicon Valley. Playing an integral role in shaping the TESCREAL concept with Torres was the computer scientist Dr. Timnit Gebru, former co-leader of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence team at Google, and co-author of the research paper, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?", that covered the environmental, social and financial risks of very large language models, and for which Google later fired her amid dispute.

Participants in the meetup will first get a widespread overview of the current movements and finalities of tech billionaires' new moral visions surrounding the long-term future of humanity, human extinction, planetary colonisation and existential risks related to the development of AGI - Artificial General Intelligence. The overview will be conceived to exert a multidisciplinary understanding of the implications of such visions, including how these are by design disconnecting from an ecological regeneration of our planet and ecosystems. Finally, participants will be invited to join a playful philosophical debate, and contribute to generate a collective vision of resistance, reaction and protest against this elitist domination of future foresight. The overall intent of this collective conversation will be of decolonising our visions, journeying from the worst possible future for a few utilitarianists, to hopeful inclusive futures for / by / with all living bodies.