Ten proposals to keep the power and wealth generated by artificial intelligence under people's control, and the manifesto behind them.
No system may decide over a human life without a person who can be held to account, and every people deserves to shape its own future, free from the domination of any empire, state or corporation.
06
The public must always be able to switch off an AI system. The most powerful models need democratic approval before release and a shutdown mechanism tested by an independent authority, which can suspend them at any time. Executives who bring a system to market without these safeguards are personally liable for the harm it causes.
07
When an automated system makes a decision about someone's job, loan, benefits or medical care, that person can challenge it before someone accountable for the outcome. At work, a major AI deployment needs the agreement of workers' representatives, and the people whose jobs are changing have a say in how. In war, no machine may decide to kill, and we back a treaty banning weapons that select and attack human targets on their own.
08
AI gives governments powers no secret police ever had, from cameras that recognise every face in a crowd to software that reads every message. We ban real-time facial recognition in public spaces, mass interception of communications and social scoring, whether a state does it or buys it from a company. Platforms may not track people to target them with ads or political messages. Any use of AI by police or intelligence services needs a judge's authorisation and is reported publicly, and encryption stays strong, without back doors.
09
International law must bind the powerful as firmly as the weak, including our own allies. We end arms sales, dual-use exports and trade privileges for any government whose leaders face an ICC arrest warrant, until the conduct behind the warrant stops. Foreign troops and nuclear weapons leave national soil as a common defence among democracies replaces them. Every country also has to face its own history, from colonial wars to dictatorship.
10
No single country can tax billionaires, govern AI or resist empires on its own. We call for a constituent convention for a federal union of democracies, open to any country that meets independently verified democratic standards; a member that stops meeting them loses its place. A parliament elected directly by citizens would govern defence, foreign policy, AI and the taxation of the largest fortunes. Until then, the rules for AI should be made at the United Nations, where every country has a vote, and middle powers and the global majority should pool their computing power and build open public models together instead of renting from Washington and Beijing.
Manifesto
Artificial intelligence could give every one of us a fairer share of what we produce and a greater say over our own lives. The wealth it creates could pay for decent wages, a basic income and public services that last, and the hours it saves could become a shorter working week. Decisions that shape our lives could stay with people we can hold to account, with these systems working for us instead of deciding over us. It could even help us solve problems no country can face alone, from a heating planet to disease. Instead, a handful of companies and governments control it, and they are using it to take our share and our say.
We hope we are wrong about where this leads, and that one day these words will read as an exaggeration. The evidence points the other way. The world is running toward a society where technology concentrates power further into the hands of the few – empires and oligarchs – and that is the better scenario, the one in which we have not lost control of these systems altogether.
01
Every great technology in history has redistributed power, and it has rarely done so in favour of working people. The machines of the industrial age enriched factory owners long before unions and socialist movements forced them to share the gains. Artificial intelligence moves faster than anything that came before, and this time there is no guarantee that the many will get a second chance.
A handful of corporations, answerable only to their founders and shareholders, now control the most powerful technology humanity has ever built. The states racing to master it treat it as an instrument of domination long before they treat it as a public good. Decisions about work, credit, information, welfare and war are moving away from institutions people can hold to account and toward systems nobody can see, owned by people nobody elected.
More and more they work together, and that alliance has a name. Technofascism is what happens when the owners of the most powerful technologies join forces with governments that no longer respect democracy, and surveillance, control of information and automated decisions become tools to keep the few in power. It is not a distant threat, because in more than one country it is already how power is exercised.
There is also a darker possibility that serious people no longer dismiss. Systems more capable than their makers could escape anyone's control, including the control of the few who built them. A world run by oligarchs is bad enough, but a world run by artificial intelligence without regard for human dignity would be worse.
02
We do not have to imagine this future, because its outline is already visible in everyday life. Wages stagnate while profits soar, housing slips out of reach and public services are cut in the name of budgets that somehow always balance for the wealthy. More and more work is broken into tasks, scheduled by apps and judged by software that answers to no one on the shop floor.
The costs fall hardest far from the boardrooms. The minerals that power our devices are dug out of the countries of the global majority under brutal conditions, and the people who train artificial intelligence are often paid a few dollars a day to do it. The data centres that run these systems drink water and electricity on the scale of cities, often in regions where a heating climate has already left the grid strained and the taps running dry.
Meanwhile the richest carry on as before, and more and more they own the tools that will decide what comes next. Across the world, force and wealth are ceasing to answer to law, and the same few profit from both.
That is the future that awaits us, unless we reach for power.
03
Human Resistance is a political movement to keep the power and wealth generated by artificial intelligence under people's control. We are a movement of the left, and we follow the tradition of the trade unions, of the anti-colonial struggles, of the campaigns for equal rights and of democratic socialism, which together won the eight-hour day, universal suffrage, public healthcare and the end of formal empires. We carry that tradition into an age its founders could not have imagined, and we welcome everyone who wants to carry it with us.
We believe that democracy cannot stop at the ballot box. It must reach the workplace, the economy and the technologies that now organise human life, because political equality means little while economic power stays in the hands of a few. We reject every form of authoritarianism, including the kind that has tried to speak in the name of socialism, since freedom and equality only survive together.
We are internationalists. Capital crosses borders freely and so do the corporations building artificial intelligence, so the people must organise across borders too. A worker in Lagos, a student in São Paulo, a nurse in Manila and a teacher in Milan face the same concentration of power, and together they can break it.
04
We stand for human dignity: the conviction that every person deserves a fair share of what we produce together and a say over the decisions that shape their life. Artificial intelligence puts both at stake.
A share. The wealth these systems create is built on our work, our words and decades of public research, and it must come back to us as decent wages, a basic income, public services and time. The hours machines save should belong to people – to care, to learning, to each other – not become one more margin for shareholders. And the fortunes oligarchs have already captured must be shared too.
A say. Technology must remain answerable to people and to the democratic institutions they build. No system, however capable, may hold final authority over a human life, and nobody's work, credit, health or freedom should be decided by a machine without a human being who can be held to account. The same is true of whole peoples. Every person and every people deserves to shape what comes next, free from oppression – whether it comes from their own government, a foreign power or a corporation too large to answer to anyone. No power, public or private, has the right to rule over people who cannot hold it to account.
05
Good intentions have not been enough. For years experts have written reports, citizens have signed open letters and governments have promised frameworks, while the concentration of power only accelerated. Asking politely has become a way of losing slowly.
So we seek power, openly and without apology, because only power can change the course of human history. We mean the power of working people organised across borders, of unions and movements, of votes and of numbers that cannot be ignored.
We will protest and act outside the chambers of power, because there is no time to wait for those inside them to find their courage. And where those chambers are not closed behind a wall of authoritarianism, we will carry our demands inside them too.
06
A powerful technology owned by Oligarchs and Empires.
We demand that the wealth of this new age be shared, and we start with the Terminator Tax: a levy on the revenue of the largest AI and robotics groups, so that those who profit from replacing human work pay for what makes us human – care, teaching and time. Part of it should fund a universal basic income, so that nobody's dignity depends on whether a machine can do their job. Wealth on today's scale is political power by another name, and it buys elections, media and regulators alike. Extreme fortunes must be taxed, the infrastructure of the digital age must come into public and shared ownership, and the link between money and political power must be broken, because a democracy in which a few people can buy the outcome has stopped being one.
We demand a technology that serves the many. The most powerful systems must be subject to democratic authorisation and public oversight, and every person must have the right to challenge an automated decision before a human being. No company and no government should be able to deploy a system that shapes millions of lives without first answering to the people it will affect, and the workers whose jobs these systems transform must have a say in how they are used.
And we demand a say for every people over its own future, which means a world without empires. Genocide like Israel's in Gaza, invasions like Russia's in Ukraine and the war in Sudan, fuelled by big powers like the UAE, show what happens when force and wealth stop answering to law. No state has the right to conquer its neighbours, and no corporation has the right to govern billions of lives from a boardroom. International law must bind the powerful as firmly as it binds the weak, whoever their friends are, and the nations of the global majority must no longer be treated as mines, markets and labour pools for the rich world.
07
Picture an ordinary week in the world we want. A nurse spends her shift with patients rather than paperwork, because the software works for her and answers to her union. A translator whose work has changed receives a share of what the machines earn from the languages people like her taught them. A family has its Friday afternoon back, because the gains of automation were turned into time instead of profit. Nobody is refused a loan, a benefit or a visa by a system they cannot question. The technology for all of this already exists; what is missing is the power to decide how it is used.
That power will not stop at a border, because nothing we have described does. The systems being built in a handful of cities will govern lives on every continent, capital moves faster than any parliament can follow, and a heating planet does not check passports. Our tools, meanwhile, still end at the edge of the nation state. That is the mismatch at the root of this century, and no country will solve it alone.
So we are building toward democracy that reaches beyond borders. Rules that bind the powerful everywhere, institutions above the national level that answer to people rather than to governments, and a floor of dignity that holds wherever you happen to have been born. Not a world without difference, but a world where the accident of birthplace no longer decides what a life is worth.
Every person we organise and every law we change is a step toward that horizon, and each one makes the next easier. We are building a movement that can carry power across borders, not by replacing national democracy but by making it answer to a larger purpose.
One day, people will elect representatives to institutions with the authority to govern the forces no country can govern alone. Until then, we will carry this horizon into every institution we can reach. We are not asking anyone to choose between their country and the world. We are refusing to let the few govern both.
We hope we are wrong. But we would rather be organised and wrong than right and too late.
The future of artificial intelligence will be decided in the next few years, and it will be decided by whoever is organised. Today that means a few companies and the governments that serve them.
But it can be us. It must be us. Join the resistance.
