IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2021 - 11

could, perhaps, be: covert infiltration of peaceful
protest groups;11 austerity [32]; hostile immigration policies; punitive welfare schemes (e.g., universal credit in the United Kingdom, " robodebt " in
Australia); significant cuts to central government
grants given to local authorities; human rights violations against people with disabilities; environmental violence (from fracking to transportation [33]);
changes to planning laws covering land rights and
development [34]; and of course, the violence of
Brexit itself.12
There are four conclusions. First, the statutory
guidance of the compulsory National Curriculum issued by the U.K. government is a stream of
wretched hypocrisy. Second, generally according
to the terms and conditions of this guidance, teachers cannot use external agencies and resources
supported and produced by the U.K. government
(which, presumably, in an interesting twist of logic,
includes the statutory guidance itself) because the
U.K. government is an organization taking, by its
own definition, " an extreme political stance on matters. " Third, it would seem rather likely that a program of research and development that proposes to
use AI for equity could be construed as violating the
ideological prescriptiveness of the guidance. Finally,
there is a manifest insecurity and defensiveness about
sneaking out prohibitions against " extreme political
stances, " twice, in statutory guidance to the " relationships, sex, and health curriculum. " This is the
behavior of a regime that knows it has no pretence to
legitimacy, has already lost the intellectual argument,
and is simply governing in bad faith. Disturbingly, its
response to increasingly insistent calls for accountability and review is not to fail forward gracefully13 but
to increase its authoritarianism [36]. At some point,
this regime will have to confront the generation whose
prospects they wrecked with their mishandling of the
climate crisis, Brexit, and the pandemic, and then
what lies will serve them there among, their angry and

defrauded young?14



References

[1] A. Manjarrés et al., " AI4Eq: For a true global village
not for global pillage, " IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag., to be
published.
[2] A. Luccioni and Y. Bengio, " On the morality of artificial
intelligence, " IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag., vol. 39, no. 1,
pp. 16-25, Jan. 2020.
[3] A. Nowak, P. Lukowicz, and P. Horodecki, " Assessing
artificial intelligence for humanity, " IEEE Technol. Soc.
Mag., vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 26-34, Apr. 2018.
[4] J. Robbins, " If technology is a parasite masquerading
as a symbiont-Are we the host? " IEEE Technol. Soc.
Mag., vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 24-33, Sep. 2019.
[6] J. Pitt, " Deepfake videos, and DDoS attacks (deliberate
denial of satire) [Editorial], " IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag.,
vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 5-8, Dec. 2019.
[6] N. Eyal and R. Hoover, Hooked: How to Build HabitForming Products. New York, NY, USA: Penguin
Publishing Group, 2014.
[7] C. Cadwalladr and E. Graham-Harrison. (2018).
Revealed: 50 Million Facebook Profiles Harvested
for Cambridge Analytica in Major Data Breach. The
Guardian, 17-03. [Online]. Available: https://www.
theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridgeanalytica-facebook-influence-us-election
[8] M. McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of
Man. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 1964.
[9] Accessed: Feb. 15, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://
uk.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-politics-teachersprotests/hungarian-teachers-say-new-school-curriculumpushes-nationalist-ideology-idUSKBN1ZY28Y
[10] (Sep. 24, 2020). Department for Education. Plan Your
Relationships, Sex and Health Curriculum. [Online].
Available: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/plan-yourrelationships-sex-and-health-curriculum
[11] Extinction Rebellion Citizens' Assemblies Working
Group. (2019). The Extinction Rebellion Guide to
Citizens' Assemblies. [Online]. Available: https://
extinctionrebellion.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/
The-Extinction-Rebellion-Guide-to-CitizensAssemblies-Version-1.1-25-June-2019.pdf
[12] V. Dodd and J. Grierson. (Jan. 10, 2020). Terrorism

11
Especially undercover operatives initiating relationships, and even having children, with protesters. Perhaps, there is term for coercion into a sexual relationship
without informed consent ....
12
The state violence could potentially translate into physical violence in Northern
Ireland, where the sectarian and unification conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s were
resolved because of the joint membership of a supranational organization, with
the " Good Friday " peace agreement being jeopardized by one party leaving that
organization.
13
It has been said that " all political careers end in failure. " So, perhaps do political regimes, but democratic regimes should fail forward for the same reason
they should be accountable for those failures, that is, for systemic improvement.
See [34] and [35].
14
With respect to Rudyard Kipling, A Dead Statesman.

March 2021

Police List Extinction Rebellion as Extremist Ideology.
The Guardian. [Online]. Available: https://www.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/xr-extinctionrebellion-listed-extremist-ideology-police-preventscheme-guidance
[13] R. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival
of American Community. New York, NY, USA: Simon &
Schuster, 2000.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica- facebook-influence-us-election https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica- facebook-influence-us-election https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica- facebook-influence-us-election https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-politics-teachers-protests/hungarian-teachers-say-new-school-curriculum-pushes-nationalist-ideology-idUSKBN1ZY28Y https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-politics-teachers-protests/hungarian-teachers-say-new-school-curriculum-pushes-nationalist-ideology-idUSKBN1ZY28Y https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-politics-teachers-protests/hungarian-teachers-say-new-school-curriculum-pushes-nationalist-ideology-idUSKBN1ZY28Y https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-hungary-politics-teachers-protests/hungarian-teachers-say-new-school-curriculum-pushes-nationalist-ideology-idUSKBN1ZY28Y https://www.gov.uk/guidance/plan-your-relationships-sex-and-health-curriculum https://www.gov.uk/guidance/plan-your-relationships-sex-and-health-curriculum https://extinctionrebellion.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The-Extinction-Rebellion-Guide-to-Citizens-Assemblies-Version-1.1-25-June-2019.pdf https://extinctionrebellion.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The-Extinction-Rebellion-Guide-to-Citizens-Assemblies-Version-1.1-25-June-2019.pdf https://extinctionrebellion.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The-Extinction-Rebellion-Guide-to-Citizens-Assemblies-Version-1.1-25-June-2019.pdf https://extinctionrebellion.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The-Extinction-Rebellion-Guide-to-Citizens-Assemblies-Version-1.1-25-June-2019.pdf https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/xr-extinction-rebellion-listed-extremist-ideology-police-prevent-scheme-guidance https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/xr-extinction-rebellion-listed-extremist-ideology-police-prevent-scheme-guidance https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/xr-extinction-rebellion-listed-extremist-ideology-police-prevent-scheme-guidance https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/10/xr-extinction-rebellion-listed-extremist-ideology-police-prevent-scheme-guidance

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2021