When compute became a values judgment. On Musk's reserved right to take Anthropic's training compute back, and the new shape of supply-chain risk for frontier AI.
Who Pays for the Commons?
Three and a half years after the emergence of generative AI as a new technology paradigm, there is broad agreement that AI companies have extracted enorm...
After AI Takes Everything | Airing
Prompted by letters from three engineers, the author asks what remains for humans as AI takes over execution, naming judgment, taste, and derivation as irreplaceable, and warns against the erosion of subjecthood.
Up the Stack: How AI’s Escape From the Commodity Trap Risks Enterprise Lock-in
Critics and boosters are both looking in the wrong place
The Pinhole View of AI Value
Focusing only on headcount reduction is like saying the only value of a car is that you don’t have to pay for a horse.
On Taste, Effort & Curiosity - again
When AI collapses how long it takes to ship, what’s left is judgment, experimentation, and knowing what not to build.
Is AI the next Dumbwaiter? — Douglas Rushkoff
The demand for AI's unbridled growth is reactionary — a way of doubling down on the same old colonizing way of doing things. It doesn't have to be.
Reclaiming the Computing Commons
Hunter writes: The commodification and exploitation of nature; the enclosure of the intellectual and informational commons in medicine, agriculture, and other areas of technical knowledge; the expropriation of public space to secure profit-all define an economic system supposedly premised on freedom.
Code Was Never the Asset - The Phoenix Architecture
Why AI makes the hidden economics of software unavoidable
Behind the AI ‘Extinction’ Power Bid: Soaring Costs Could Hit 10% of World GDP
AI firms are invoking unproven extinction warnings to justify restrictions on developments by their smaller rivals whilst seeking greater influence over regulation
Who earned the score? - Sensemaker
This week's AI claims blurred models, systems, simulations and people. The evidence becomes clearer when the tested subject comes first.
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.
Deconstructing the Machine Learning Value Chain
This essay offers a materialist analysis of machine learning in the form of a critical intervention that deconstructs the value chain of this technological para
A Short Guide to Data Strikes and Conscious Data Contribution in the Context of 2026 Frontier AI
Back to the basics of data leverage.
Dynamic pricing
Both AI and non-AI
AI 'surveillance pricing' under scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers
Canada Has a Precedent to Regulate Surveillance Pricing
Instacart’s AI-Enabled Pricing Experiments May Be Inflating Your Grocery Bill, CR and Groundwork Collaborative Investigation Finds via @ConsumerReports
Kroger Stores Overcharging Shoppers on Sale Items, CR Price Check Finds via @ConsumerReports
Different Prices for the Same Ride: How Uber and Lyft Use AI to Get More Money Out of You via @ConsumerReports