Ludmilla

We must negate the machines-that-think. Humans must set their own guidelines. This is not something machines can do. Reasoning depends upon programming, not on hardware, and we are the ultimate program! Our Jihad is a "dump program." We dump the things which destroy us as humans!

— Frank Herbert, Dune

When Ludmilla Tabasco first qualified for "The Swarm" she had never been on the AI subject before.

Off course, she was using all the fancy AI tools that came up in the late 20s and had her share on using massive energy to procuce more of the irrelevant, me-too AI fluff everybody who could afford it was producing at the time but nobody needed and nobody wanted, mainly because potential customers could produce it by themselves or got it cheaper on the me-too canibalizing market battlefield or needes something better, something that really could deliver up to the expectations of those who were still innovative and rally doing stuff.

She even tried to make a business by advising corporations on tools for their fools, and finally found herself at the brink of burnout, which she simply could not afford considering her debts and shrinking reputation as a reliable force of society to keep a flat above street-level.

And finally overlooking the pattern and with the help of some like-minded nerds she startet to pull back: Knowing that she hat to get into the AI subject before being allowed to rise her voice against it, she has reduced her private and professinal life to become AI subject expert and finally became chosen Subject Leader - most probably because she demonstrated already then a more neutral, non biased and distant view than the idiot-driven, pro-AI pseudo-enthusiast BlaBla-mainstream.

Just by demonstrating that all really relevant IT applications still in use today running our core infrastructure, finance, and administrative base were developed by a few in the 80s without AI or computer power, she could convince The Swarm, that technological porgress since then was just on the CPU-level by doing more, faster and especially cheaper that did not get us far as a species but has just allowed the masses of idiots to participate and the ones who were controlling the masses, seicing all the power and remaining in control.

And with the "help" of many AI projects either stalled, not delivering up to promise, and doing severe damage to the selection of the best and most valuable in society, her permanent focus on AI's shadows and negative side effects has planted the seed of resistance.

Maybe her reference to Butlerian Jihad might have moved the masses, but the copy/paste adaptation of the movement has never been her first intention and never has been her plan, and definitely not becoming its formal leader, when considering the radicalization of its implementation.

Her goal was never, ever the destruction of all "AI", but to replace this with something that, first, deserved the name "intelligence" and second, was designed with public "Swarm-voting" built into its DNA.