A dinner at TEDAI

On Thursday, Colombe and I hosted a dinner at TEDAI in Vienna. TEDAI is a conference where AI gets discussed mostly in billions, raised or spent or soon to be made. We wanted one evening where the question was who ends up with those billions, and who gets a say.

So we split the room. Out of the 300 guests, some played the owners of AI, some the workers, some governments. Then, in our opening talk, we took everyone ten years ahead to the same dinner in 2036, and described two possible futures.

In the first version, a handful of tech billionaires run most of the world’s AI and keep nearly all the money it makes. Most of the workers’ chairs are empty, because their old jobs are gone and they get by on a small state payment that stops if they miss an appointment or post the wrong thing. Governments have bought so much of the industry’s software that they can’t regulate it anymore, and they use the technology to monitor their citizens. The worst part, and the scariest, is that nobody broke any law to get there. Nobody stood up.

The second version had the same technology and the same companies, and the billionaires were still there, still the best-dressed table. But at some point governments started asking for something back in exchange for the land, electricity and data. Now every household gets a yearly share of AI profits, which people in the story just call “the machine money.” Workers organised and got a shorter week for the same pay. The owners complained a lot, but none of them left. Governments adopted AI, but instead of turning it against the public they turned it against power - anyone can check what their government is doing from their phone, in a few clicks.

The speech went down well, and the debate was fierce. Afterwards, a lot of people came up to us about this line:

“Same machines, same companies. Nobody invented nicer technology. Those people decided differently, and they decided early.”

I think that’s what Human Resistance is really about. The machines aren’t what decide between those two futures. The question is whether the rest of us are in the room when the decisions get made. The full talk is at the bottom if you’re curious.

Last week our movement also held its first event outside of Europe, in Marrakech. Yassine organised it, and about twenty people came, mostly young. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I saw that kind of energy in a room. By the end they were talking about building a party in Morocco. Thank you, Yassine, and everyone who showed up.

This week we launch our first campaign: the Terminator Tax.

Yes, the name attracts attention, and that’s on purpose. The idea itself is simple. Any company group with more than €750 million in global revenue would pay 10% of what it earns from AI and robotics. The money would go to public services, to retraining people whose jobs get automated, and to the writers, artists and researchers whose work was used to train these systems without anyone asking them. Europe already taxes digital services, so this isn’t a fantasy. It’s a decision.

We’ll start with a petition open to everyone, wherever you live. To make it land we need people who can:

translate the campaign into their language share it with their networks in the first 48 hours put us in touch with economists, journalists or politicians who should hear about it help with design, video or social media organize in the streets and squares of this planet If any of that is you, even for an hour or two, reply to this email and tell me what you can do. I’ll get back to every one of you before launch.

Onwards!

Andrea, Colombe and Yassine

Human Resistance

Opening remarks, TEDAI26 dinner, Vienna Andrea Venzon and Colombe Cahen-Salvador

Colombe: Good evening, and welcome. I’m Colombe, this is Andrea. Thank you for choosing this table out of all the dinners you could be at tonight. We’ll keep this short, because the food is on its way, and because the real conversation tonight is yours, not ours.

A word on who we are. We come from politics: we built a pan-European party that sits in the European Parliament, and a global progressive network spanning 134 countries. Today we are working hard to bring AI, and how to deal with it, into the political debate before it’s too late. As part of this work, we are focused on a specific question: when machines can do most of the work, how do people stay in charge?

Andrea: We’d much rather hear your answer than ours. First, look up. Above this cellar is Vienna’s city hall. A hundred years ago, the people working in that building were running a city that had just lost a war and an empire. It was broke, overcrowded and sick. And they took a decision that sounded impossible at the time: housing in this city would not be left to the market. Then they started building, and they never stopped.

Today more than half of Vienna lives in homes that decision made possible, and this is regularly ranked the best city in the world to live in.

Colombe: Hardly anyone remembers the names of the people who voted for it. Everyone in this city lives with what they decided.

Andrea: We think this decade is one of those moments. AI is going to change who has work and who has power, and over the next few years a fairly small number of people will set the terms. Some of them are sitting in this room.

Colombe: So tonight we don’t want a polite conversation about AI in general. We want you to argue as if the decisions were yours, because some of them will be.

Your cards ask what the world should look like in ten years. So let us take you there. Twice. Same cellar, same dinner: TEDAI, a Thursday at the end of November, 2036.

Andrea: Ten years from now, this room has fewer tables in it. There are half as many waiters, and they move faster, because a device on their wrist is timing every plate.

Let’s start with the owners. If your card says owners, put your hand up. Congratulations, in this future you won. A handful of companies run most of the world’s AI, and through it most of the world’s paperwork: your mortgage, your diagnosis, your child’s school report. Their systems do the work of millions of people, and almost all the money that work earns goes to them. The founders are richer than most countries. They don’t come to dinners like this one any more. They send someone.

Colombe: Workers, hands up. Now look around, because in 2036 most of these chairs are empty. The translators, accountants, call centre staff and junior lawyers who sat here in 2026 lost their jobs, and nobody negotiated anything on their behalf. The lucky ones still get a few shifts a month, checking what the machines have already decided. The rest live on a small state payment, which they keep as long as they stay registered, tracked and quiet. Miss an appointment and it stops. Post the wrong thing and it goes under review.

Andrea: Governments. Your table is still here. It has only moved, right up next to the owners. Over ten years you became the industry’s best customer. You bought its systems to decide who gets benefits, who crosses a border and which neighbourhoods get more police. Now you can’t regulate the companies you depend on, because every time you try, someone reminds you whose software runs your tax office. And when people protested, you used those same systems to find them. Demonstrations still get permits. Sometimes.

Colombe: And this is the part that should frighten us. Nobody at any of these tables broke the law. Each of them took one reasonable step at a time, and nobody else was asked.

Same cellar, 2036. You can barely hear yourself think, because every table is full, and nobody is checking their phone to find out whether they still have a job on Monday.

Andrea: The owners are still here. Still rich, still building, still the best-dressed table in the room. But when they came to governments asking for land, electricity, data and public money, governments asked for something back: a stake. A share of AI profits now goes into a public fund that pays every citizen a dividend, and fortunes above a billion pay a minimum tax. Once a year every household gets a letter with its share in it. People here just call it the machine money. The owners complained, loudly. Not one of them left. Europe, India, Japan, Nigeria: they were far too good a market to walk away from.

Colombe: The workers’ table is the loudest in the room, and the youngest. When AI started taking their tasks, they organised, and they won the oldest argument in the history of work: when a machine saves time, the time belongs to the people who did the work. Most of them now work three days a week for the same pay. The ladder came back too. Every firm that automated its junior jobs pays for apprenticeships, so the youngest person at that table started as a trainee two years ago and is already running her own cases. Tomorrow is Friday. Half of that table is going to the mountains.

Andrea: The governments use AI too. They just point it the other way, at power instead of at people. Any citizen can read every public contract, every lobbying meeting and every company’s tax bill, in plain language, before their coffee goes cold. Last spring a retired teacher here in Vienna found a minister’s contract with a consultancy run by his brother-in-law. It took her one afternoon, on her phone. He resigned that Friday. And when a data centre wants a town’s water, the town decides, and gets a share of its revenues.

Colombe: Same machines, same companies. Nobody invented nicer technology. Those people decided differently, and they decided early.

Andrea: So what changed? In the second room, everybody paid something. The owners paid in profit. The workers paid in risk: organising, striking, being the first to say no. Governments paid in courage, because they had to face down the most powerful companies in history and the lobbyists who came with them.

Colombe: None of it was free. Ask anyone in that second room whether they’d go back.

Andrea: Look at your card. Tonight you are one of those tables. Ten years from now, somebody will sit in your chair. Which room will they walk into?

Colombe: For the next hour, you argue for your table, whether you believe in it or not. There are three questions on your card. What does the world look like for your camp today? What should it look like in ten years? And which one to three policies get you from the first answer to the second?

At the end we’ll hear from a few of you, and find out whether the three tables want any of the same things. Our bet is that two of them agree faster than anyone expects, and both end up looking at the third.

Andrea: A hundred years ago, the people upstairs chose. Now it’s our turn. Over to your tables. Enjoy your dinner.