McQuillan preprint proposes 'decomputing' beyond AI critique

AI should be treated as a symptom, not the object of critique. That is the pitch of Dan McQuillan's new Zenodo preprint 'Beyond AI: Infrastructuring the Common Good,' posted on September 3, 2026, in which he proposes an alternative programme he calls 'decomputing.'

In the abstract's own words, AI is 'diagnostic of deeper contradictions,' and its 'rampant scaling of energy and resource demands heralds a form of "total mobilisation".'

Decomputing is McQuillan's counter-programme, and it borrows from degrowth. It 'adopts a degrowth framework and advocates for reclaiming agency through deautomatisation and people's councils, in order to develop convivial alternatives that centre an ethics of care,' he writes. He frames it as a 'prefigurative praxis for those experiencing ruptures in the infrastructures of everyday life,' one aimed at 'minimising the opening for an authoritarian turn or war economy.'

The paper acknowledges funding from the Economic and Social Research Council, the University of Bristol's Centre for Sociodigital Futures, and the AHRC BRAID programme. Two researchers we track shared it the day it went up. The argument is philosophical rather than empirical, drawing on 'destituent power and British cybernetics traditions' rather than offering an implementation blueprint.