Code is a liability (not an asset). Tech bosses don't understand this. They think AI is great because it produces 10,000 times more code than a programmer, but that just means it's producing 10,000 times more liabilities. AI is the asbestos we're shoveling into the walls of our high-tech society:
Pluralistic: IP can’t save you from AI (18 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
You don't have to believe that AI "art" is any good (I don't), nor do you have to believe that AI "art" can be any good (I don't) to understand that the reason that the capital markets are putting trillions into AI is that they believe they can fire workers of every kind and replace them with AI:
Code Was Never the Asset - The Phoenix Architecture
Why AI makes the hidden economics of software unavoidable
AI is coming for insurance professionals – and women
New research reveals that millions of workers face both high AI exposure and low ability to adapt - and the insurance industry sits squarely in the crosshairs
AI Is a Product of Humanity. Humanity Should Own AI.
Big Tech has looted humanity’s creative output to create artificial intelligence. We don’t just deserve a share of AI’s profits — we deserve control over it.
AI can cost more than human workers now
When AI labs raise prices, big spending on AI could shift from a flex to a liability.
Pluralistic: How an AI moratorium can save AI bosses (16 Sep 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
There's lots of reasons to believe the "hyperscaler" model of AI can never be profitable, and not just because of its gigantic expenditures and negative unit economics (the companies lose money with every new customer and every new use, and they lose more money with each generation of their products):
Pluralistic: AI solipsists and AI cynics (24 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
As a technology, AI isn't exceptional. It's not exceptionally wicked. It's not exceptionally good. Take away the accompanying, galactic-scale stock-swindle, and we'd call AI's applications "plug-ins" and we'd use them and abuse them in the same way that we've used every other technology:
Pluralistic: “Rights for robots” and the AI slavery fantasy (10 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
While the AI bubble is primarily a material phenomenon (driven by the calculation that bosses are easy marks for a sales pitch that sees them replacing workers with software), there is an inescapable ideological component to it: the desire for a world without people in it:
AI IS CREATIVE BANKRUPTCY
Vulnerability Research Is Cooked
For the last two years, technologists have ominously predicted that AI coding agents will be responsible for a deluge of security vulnerabilities. They were right! Just, not for the reasons they thought.
Pluralistic: Copyright won't solve creators' Generative AI problem (09 Feb 2023)
The media spectacle of generative AI (in which AI companies' breathless claims of their software's sorcerous powers are endlessly repeated) has understandably alarmed many creative workers, a group that's already traumatized by extractive abuse by media and tech companies.
AI's Catastrophic Risk Isn't Rogue Machines, It's Cognitive Surrender
For many, AI introduces the suspicion that self-investment is inherently a losing proposition, writes recent graduate Evan Liu.
AI Code Is Producing a Quality Crisis Nobody Wants to Talk About
The productivity numbers look great. AI coding tools are everywhere.
An update on recent Claude Code quality reports
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.
Microsoft reports are exposing AI's real cost problem: Using the tech is more expensive than paying human employees | Fortune
Companies are racing to incentivize employees to use AI. But as some companies are finding, the more employees that use the technology, the heavier the bill.
