#rp26 speaker Quinn Slobodian: Muskism and the automation of consent

Elon Musk has built an empire. However, there is one pressing problem: X and its chatbot ‘Grok’ utilise data and content without the consent of users. This includes, for example, the unauthorised exploitation of user content for AI training or for the creation of deepfakes.

At re:publica 26, author and researcher Quinn Slobodian will draw on his latest book to discuss how Musk is attempting to secure legitimacy through his social media platform and its associated chatbot, ‘Grok’ – and ultimately to automate user approval.

While internet culture ironically observed in ‘Godwin's Law’ that the longer an online discussion goes on, the more likely it is that someone will make a Nazi comparison, Musk is deliberately pushing the discourse towards ‘MechaHitler’. Quinn argues that this ‘cyborg conservatism’ floods the zone with content that normalises hierarchy, social exclusion, and the treatment of outsiders as bugs and viruses to be contained.

Quinn Slobodian teaches international history at Boston University. His books include Globalists, Crack-Up Capitalism, and Hayek’s Bastards. The last was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism. Forthcoming with Ben Tarnoff is Muskism. A Guide for the Perplexed. He has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Financial Times, Spike Art Magazine, and others. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and was a fellow at Chatham House, Harvard and the Free University of Berlin.