The biggest threat from AI is the sense that we have no say in it. To that I say game on

Donald Trump after a meeting with technology executives about artificial intelligence at the White House in Washington DC last month. Photograph: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenDonald Trump after a meeting with technology executives about artificial intelligence at the White House in Washington DC last month. Photograph: Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty ImagesThe biggest threat from AI is the sense that we have no say in it. To that I say game onPeter LewisThe tech bros and their highly paid sock puppets are banking on us giving in to their ‘inevitability doctrine’. But in Australia, and around the world, resistance is rising

Of all the drivers of the populist wave, one of the most powerful is the sense of inevitability that surrounds what we are told is the march of progress. In presenting the future as a fait accompli, it poisons the civic well by dealing us out of the game.

While the US clings on to its status as the oldest constitutional democracy, the unholy alliance between the tech overlords and the White House is creating its own AI reality untethered to the will of the people.

On the velocity and trajectory of the technology, Trump and the tech overlords have determined we must hit the accelerator and dispense with guardrails to “win” an ill-defined race to build a god in a box. This reckless exercise of power from a waning empire has created its own reality for all of us.

Read moreIn Australia, the government has determined that the only way we can exercise control in a world of such chaos is to grab on to this juggernaut. We become to US tech data what the Saudis are to oil; using renewables to power massive centres in the desert, converting solar into AI tokens and piping them up to Asia, a new export industry that will power our common wealth.

Within the inevitability doctrine this strategy has logic. The alternative, we are told, is to become a client state to Silicon Valley.

But in pursuing this vision we risk being blinded to the foreseeable consequences of what we are signing ourselves up to.

The industry we are building derives value by replacing workers, it has been built on the stolen work of creators, its unregulated deployment is causing unconscionable harms particularly in theatres of war, it has an insatiable thirst for energy and water, while even its creators say there’s a not insignificant chance it will destroy humanity.

The “inevitability doctrine” demands we concede rather than properly explore and negotiate these trade-offs. This facade of democracy leads to its populist backlash. We are seeing this in the US where the Bannon right and Sanders left are joining forces to block the scale out of datacentres, part of a broader and timely political reckoning.

A few things have been happening over recent weeks to suggest something similar is starting to happen here.

View image in fullscreenKayla Thompson with members of a group campaigning against a Firmus AI datacentre at St Leonards, Tasmania. Photograph: Sarah Rhodes/The GuardianFirst, Australians who despite their high take-up of some AI tools remain among the world’s most sceptical, have a low tolerance for tech overlords. GetUp’s successful campaign against Coles’ partnership with Palantir, the data company that licenses its software to the US military who bomb children and immigration officials to track individuals, shows the vulnerability of public brands who lean in too close to the beast.

Second, creators whose work has been stolen to train models that will diminish the value of their future careers are standing their ground. They are rightly aggrieved and won’t just wave through anything that feels like an amnesty. They are demanding compensation for the theft of their work as well as an ongoing model to give them control over the terms of its use.

Even more significant may be the failure of the Firmus IPO, which was to have been the biggest Australian float since Telstra. The decision not to list the company followed the withdrawal of a datacentre in Sydney, the first major project to fall over due to local community pressure. There are a range of possible reasons the bid failed, including accusations of greed, but surely the growing community backlash to datacentres had some scratching their heads about the prospects of a hyper-scale out.

Read moreConsumers, creators, communities are all challenging the “inevitability” storyline. Together they add up to a series of counter-punches that suggest our democratic faculties have not yet been fully exhausted.

But the “inevitability doctrine” is durable and any pushback will need to be ongoing, because these companies have the resources, influence and bald self-interest to pursue their objectives with all the commitment of an AI agent gone rogue.

The biggest danger to our democracy this technology poses is not in the cynical misuse of an untested and unregulated deployment (although this will be hugely destructive) but in the broader sense that we have no say in what is happening to us. Right now, its game on.

In our parliament over the coming weeks there will be fights to land privacy reform, a digital duty of care, standards on datacentres and rules on how governments will use the technology on its citizens. In workplaces there will be struggles over usage, surveillance and displacement. In our schools and social circles, real negotiations on how we choose to use the bots and agents, or whether we need to use them at all.

I know it’s exhausting and overwhelming and that is what the tech bros and their highly paid sock puppets are banking on, that we just all run out of steam and seek refuge in the user experiences designed to meet our every desire.

But the resistance many of us feel is real and, so long as we remain a democracy, it will be at the ballot box where we will have the opportunity to demand those who purport to lead us challenge this sense of the inevitable. Because here’s the thing: inevitability is also a choice.

Peter Lewis is non-executive chair of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company that undertook qualitative research for Labor in the last federal election. He is the host of the weekly podcast Burning Platforms. His columns are accredited Proudly Human