Anti AI Partij (Anti-AI Party) · New Dutch party in formation
Stopping technology has never worked. Just ask the Luddites, who smashed weaving machines more than two hundred years ago: the machines came anyway. So the real question isn’t whether AI is coming. It’s who owns it, and who gets the profits. Right now, that’s a handful of tech billionaires. We say: AI for everyone. Shared fairly.
Our core idea
AI can take over an enormous amount of work and create an enormous amount of value. But if we do nothing, those gains flow to whoever owns the systems: a small group of shareholders and tech billionaires, mostly in the United States and China. Ordinary people get the bill: fewer jobs, lower wages, more insecurity.
That isn’t a law of nature. It’s a choice about ownership. And we want to put that choice back where it belongs: with all of us.
No party bosses, no Soviet nostalgia, no queues for bread. In plain words: what AI earns, we share fairly.
The machines are coming anyway. Let’s make sure they belong to all of us.
Why this matters
AI itself isn’t the problem. The problem is who owns it, who writes the rules and who pockets the profits. Ten consequences of leaving it to the market and the billionaires.
AI isn’t just replacing factory work. It’s coming for office work, healthcare admin, customer service, translation, journalism and programming. As long as a few companies own the systems, the profits flow to them. Even the IMF warns that in most scenarios AI will likely worsen inequality, and that in advanced economies like ours about 60 percent of jobs may be affected by AI.[1]
The most powerful AI systems are controlled by a handful of American and Chinese companies. Whoever runs those systems shapes what millions of people read, see and believe. The Netherlands and Europe are becoming dependent on companies we have no say over.
Big decisions about our society are being made in boardrooms in Silicon Valley, not in parliament. Technology gets rolled out first and regulated later — if at all. That’s how elected representatives lose control.
With AI, anyone can produce convincing fake videos, fake voices and fake articles in seconds. Platforms profit from anything that grabs attention, real or fake. That erodes trust in the news, in politicians and in elections. When nothing looks real anymore, the biggest propaganda budget wins.
AI makes mass facial recognition, behavioural analysis and profiling cheap and easy. Whoever owns the systems profits from your data. What is technically possible will sooner or later be used — by companies and governments alike. A free society needs the right not to be watched and judged all the time.
The Netherlands knows better than anyone what goes wrong when a system judges people. In the childcare benefits scandal (toeslagenaffaire), tens of thousands of parents, many on low incomes, were wrongly treated as fraudsters. Amnesty International found that nationality was used as a risk factor in the algorithm and that there was no meaningful human oversight.[2] Families lost their homes, their jobs and their health. This must never happen again.
AI models have been trained on the writing, photos, music and art of millions of creators — mostly without permission and without payment. Those same models then compete with the people who made that work, and the profits go to whoever owns the model.
AI runs in gigantic data centres. The International Energy Agency expects global electricity demand from data centres to more than double by 2030, to around 945 terawatt-hours — slightly more than all of Japan uses today — with AI as the main driver.[3] Data centres also use water for cooling. In a country with an overloaded power grid, we have to choose: homes and businesses, or server farms for foreign tech companies?
If schools, hospitals and governments run on AI owned by a few companies, we’re at the mercy of their prices and terms. And when you let a machine do everything, you forget how to do it yourself. A society that outsources its knowledge to private owners becomes vulnerable.
If an AI system turns you down for a loan, a job or benefits, who do you hold responsible? The company points at the algorithm, and the algorithm is an opaque ‘black box’. Even the European Commission acknowledges that it is often impossible to find out why an AI system reached a decision.[4] Without accountability, there is no rule of law.
What we want
One principle: AI must serve everyone, not just its owners.
Our key policy
Profits from AI fund an AI dividend for every resident of the Netherlands, to be built up into a basic income. The big AI systems are brought into public or cooperative ownership, so the gains go to society rather than to a few shareholders. That’s what we call AI Communism: sharing fairly.
Companies that replace jobs with AI pay an AI tax. The revenue goes to the AI dividend, to people who lose their jobs, to retraining and to lower taxes on work.
No one gets fired just because AI is cheaper without a generous redundancy plan. Works councils get a right of consent over major AI roll-outs.
Higher corporate tax for tech giants, an end to tax avoidance schemes and, where necessary, breaking them up. The Netherlands must not become dependent on a few American and Chinese companies.
When the government, your bank, your insurer or your employer makes a decision about you, you always have the right to have it reviewed by a human. Never again a benefits scandal caused by an algorithm.
A ban on facial recognition in public spaces, on social scoring and on autonomous AI weapons.
Deepfakes of people made without their consent become a criminal offence. A mandatory AI label on AI-generated content, and a ban on AI propaganda around elections.
No training AI on creators’ work without permission and payment, and no training on personal data without explicit consent. You always have the right to have your data deleted.
Teachers come first. Children first learn to think, write and do maths for themselves. No AI cameras in schools.
No new large AI data centres while the power grid is overloaded. Data centres pay the full price for energy and water.
“The machines are coming anyway.
The only question is: who owns them?”
— Core message of the Anti AI Partij
Read more
If you want to dig deeper, read AI Communism by Jo Chen & Per Jas. The book’s central claim: sufficiently advanced AI, and superintelligence in particular, makes a form of communism both necessary and, for the first time, workable.
According to the authors, the old proof that a planned economy cannot work was a proof about information and computation. It was decisive against the ministries, paper forms and telephones of the twentieth century. A machine that removes that constraint changes what is possible.
The book presents itself as an argument, not a programme. It is not the AAP’s party platform, but it is a line of thinking that inspires us.
About the party
The Anti AI Partij (AAP) is a new Dutch political party. Our name says ‘anti’, and we mean it: we oppose AI as it is being set up today — as the property of a few billionaires who keep the profits and leave the risks to the rest of us.
Fighting the technology itself is pointless; that has never worked. We’re fighting for something else: making sure the gains from AI reach everyone. We stand for work, fair shares, human dignity and a government that protects its citizens.
The Anti AI Partij is currently being founded. Our full party programme will be published here soon.
Join us
Want to become a member, volunteer, stand as a candidate, or just stay in the loop? Leave your details and we’ll get in touch.
Contact
Email us at info@a-a-p.nl
Our postal address and Chamber of Commerce details will follow once the party is formally established.
