Posts by KMO
KMO Show 035 – Anti-AI Backlash
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Date: April 20, 2026 Host: KMO Guest: Kenneth E. Harrell
A 20-year-old throws a Molotov cocktail at the home of Sam Altman, then heads to OpenAI headquarters and tries to break in by smashing a chair through the glass front of the building. He’s carrying kerosene and has a Yudkowski-inspired manifesto in his car.
That’s not an isolated story. It’s a signal.
KMO and Kenneth E. Harrell use the incident as a starting point to examine the emerging backlash against AI—where real grievances (job loss, data extraction, infrastructure strain) collide with confused narratives about existential risk.
The result is a volatile mix: people reacting to something they use every day but don’t understand, directed by elites who either can’t or won’t explain what’s happening in terms that land.
From there, the conversation moves outward:
- Intelligence as environment-mapping, not a human monopoly
- Why the “stochastic parrot” critique no longer holds
- AI as a tool that talks back—and why that matters
- The failure of science fiction to prepare us for this moment
- The widening gap between capability and comprehension
Mid-Interview Break
“Cream of the Slop” by Skyebrows
A fast, layered track built around Manjaro Linux, VTuber aesthetics, and a barrage of younger online cultural references. Dense, unserious, and very much of its moment.
References
- Maggie Vale On why “stochastic parrot” is a weak frame—and why both humans and machines are better understood as probabilistic systems.
- Skyebrows AI-assisted music and video built from stacked internet references and persona-driven presentation.
The backlash to AI isn’t about AI alone.
It’s what happens when a system changes faster than the stories people use to make sense of it—and faster than institutions can respond.
That gap doesn’t stay abstract for long.
Conversations on Collapse
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KMO revisits a sampler created during the original assembly of Conversations on Collapse and uses it to open a new project: Getting Over Collapse.
Featuring excerpts from:
- Dmitri Orlov
- Albert K. Bates
- Thomas Homer-Dixon
- Sharon Astyk
- Albert Bartlett
- Cornelia Butler Flora
- Bill McKibben
- James Howard Kunstler
- Colin Tudge
- Joe Bageant
- Daniel Pinchbeck (appearing in a trialogue with Dmitri Orlov)
This episode returns to the Peak Oil era with a more critical but still appreciative eye. The result is part archive artifact, part historical reflection, and part inquiry into what collapse discourse got right, what it got wrong, and why it mattered.
CRV 472
Podcast (crealmvault): Play in new window | Download ()
I talk about my day job, something which I've resolved only to talk about behind the paywall. After that, I describe my month-long experiment with vaping nicotine.
Microsoft is re-opening Three Mile Island to generate electricity to train their power-hungry AI models. Finally, I talk about the recent advances, sparked mostly by Tesla, to bring humanoid robots to market at an affordable price.
CRV 472
Podcast (crealmvault): Play in new window | Download ()
KMO talks with Dr. Tommy Blanchard about social media, the philosophy of mind, large language models, and science fiction. This is the second hour of a conversation that began on KMO Show episode 023.
CRV 471
Podcast (crealmvault): Play in new window | Download ()
The conversation with Douglas Rushkoff that began in the most recent episode of the KMO Show concludes here. Afterwards KMO reflects on the wackiness of the 2024 presidential election in the USA.