Pluralistic: AI solipsists and AI cynics (24 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

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:

Agentic AI and the next intelligence explosion

For decades, the artificial intelligence (AI) “singularity” has been heralded as a single, titanic mind bootstrapping itself to godlike intelligence, consolidating all cognition into a cold silicon point. But this vision is almost certainly wrong in its most fundamental assumption. If AI development follows the path of previous major evolutionary transitions or “intelligence explosions,” our current step-change in computational intelligence will be plural, social, and deeply entangled with its forebears (us!).

Pluralistic: Google’s AI pricing plan (21 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Google is spending a lot on AI, but what's not clear is how Google will make a lot from AI. Or, you know, even break even. Given, you know, that businesses are seeing zero return from AI:

AI Is a Waste of Time

The newest AI tools are accelerating basic research and scaring the general public. But many people are simply using them as toys.

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 Creating Peak Software, Media is the Best Analogy

Let's learn more about the world's most important manufactured product. Meaningful insight, timely analysis, and an occasional investment idea.

"AI" is Automated Inequality

Tech bros still dominate the discussions about so-called "AI" with false claims. Even most "AI"-critical researchers spend much of their time meticulously debunking (always only a subset of) claims, leaving vast areas of the economic consequences of "AI" unexplored. (Even the "AI"-evangelist Economi

AI's Affordability Crisis

A year ago in The Back Of The AI Envelope I pointed out that the AI platforms were running the drug-dealer's algorithm, "the first one's fr...

What we can’t measure about AI – yet | Aeon Essays

The costs of transformative innovations are immediately clear: it’s the longterm gains that are hardest to understand

AI, Ethics, and Society — Home

Perspective: AI demand is inflated, and only Anthropic is being realistic

The main usage metric for artificial intelligence, called tokens, looks explosive on paper, but it may be significantly overstated.

AIs are not people

Humans and other fleshy life-forms are valuable in ways that artificial intelligence never can be.