A Real Political Economy of Technology

AI’s climate impact is much smaller than many feared

New findings challenge the widespread belief that AI is an environmental villain. By analyzing U.S. economic data and AI usage across industries, researchers discovered that AI’s energy consumption—while significant locally—barely registers at national or global scales. Even more surprising, AI could help accelerate green technologies rather than hinder them.

The Socialist Charcuterie Board - The Ideas Letter

Taking issue with Benanav’s institutional vision of a democratic political economy of technology, Morozov argues that generative AI exposes a deeper problem that socialism has yet to solve: how to…

Separating AI’s Technological Problems From its Capitalism Problems

Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier say integrating a technology as disruptive as AI responsibly requires deep structural reforms.

OpenAI Calls for New Industrial Policy as AI Reshapes Economy and Governance

OpenAI’s policy paper argues that governments must adopt a new industrial policy to manage AI’s economic disruption.

State of AI 2026 | The Industry-Defining Report

Explore how AI is shaping the digital economy in 2026, with 80+ pages of data on ad spend, app downloads, web behavior, user demographics, and so much more.

From the Platform Society to the AI Society: Towards Critical Studies of Generative AI

The era of AI has begun. Generative AI is rapidly reshaping knowledge production, culture, and political authority, giving rise to an emerging AI society. Yet this transformation did not emerge ex nihilo. This paper argues that the AI society can only be understood in relation to the platform society from which it arises. Tracing the transition from platforms to AI, we identify interlinked economic, epistemic, and political shifts. Economically, AI emerges within platform-based rentier capitalism but reconfigures the monopoly mechanisms on which its accumulation depends. Epistemically, LLMs mark a shift from predictive to generative epistemics, entangling theory formation and knowledge production with private research-as-a-service infrastructures. Politically, governance shifts from data politics to alignment politics: from shaping visibility to shaping what can be said, thought, and imagined. Together, these transformations signal a qualitative shift in mediation—from governing interaction to governing cognition itself—and call for a Critical AI Studies.

Techno-capitalism, Crisis Epistemology, and Disaster Ableism: How (not) to Respond to Generative AI in Higher education (My presentation @ #PhiDisSocCh6)

Introduction Techno-capitalism is a social system dominated by technology-driven capital, in which technological development is a primary vehicle for wealth concentration. Professors are currently …

Bridging the gap: inequalities that divide those who can and cannot create sustainable outcomes with AI

The widespread use of AI technologies impacts individuals, organisations, and societies in ways that warrant more comprehensive investigation. Inequalities in benefiting from AI advancements may le...

Imperial State Capitalism

A new geopolitics is shaping the development of AI and the energy transition.

AI Economy Institute - Microsoft Research

The AI Economy Institute (AIEI) is Microsoft’s flagship think tank dedicated to shaping an inclusive, trustworthy AI economy. We building a network of scholars and convening that network with our subject matter experts to explore how artificial intelligence is transforming work, education, and productivity – and making this knowledge base available to policy-makers, educators, and […]

AI, Decomputing and the Interregnum

This paper treats AI as diagnostic for the deeper changes taking place in the existing order of things. It uses AI's alignment with both the political economy and with the dualisms that underpin it, including race, gender and anthropocentrism, to highlight the nihilistic character of the current restructuring. AI's scaling and accelerationism are taken as examples of the wider tactics being invoked by hegemonic power to maintain control under changing conditions. From this perspective, the massive build-out of data centres isn't simply a seizure of energy resources but a manifestation of an aggressive and misogynist technopolitics. The paper argues that a liberal push for digital sovereignty doesn't interrupt these dynamics but plays into the hands of emerging technofascism. It proposes instead the prefigurative tactic of 'decomputing', which draws on degrowth, deautomatisation and a convivial approach to technology. It explores decomputing as a means to mitigate both material and relational harms and as a decisive turn towards infrastructuring the common good. The paper concludes that AI is the contradiction that reveals many others, not least the gap between claims to legitimacy and the actuality of destructive violence, and proposes an alternative technopolitics of reciprocity that prioritises care and sustainability.

AI, Decomputing and the Interregnum

This paper treats AI as diagnostic for the deeper changes taking place in the existing order of things. It uses AI's alignment with both the political economy and with the dualisms that underpin it, including race, gender and anthropocentrism, to highlight the nihilistic character of the current restructuring. AI's scaling and accelerationism are taken as examples of the wider tactics being invoked by hegemonic power to maintain control under changing conditions. From this perspective, the massive build-out of data centres isn't simply a seizure of energy resources but a manifestation of an aggressive and misogynist technopolitics. The paper argues that a liberal push for digital sovereignty doesn't interrupt these dynamics but plays into the hands of emerging technofascism. It proposes instead the prefigurative tactic of 'decomputing', which draws on degrowth, deautomatisation and a convivial approach to technology. It explores decomputing as a means to mitigate both material and relational harms and as a decisive turn towards infrastructuring the common good. The paper concludes that AI is the contradiction that reveals many others, not least the gap between claims to legitimacy and the actuality of destructive violence, and proposes an alternative technopolitics of reciprocity that prioritises care and sustainability.

If AI is normal technology, history is not reassuring. — LessWrong

There’s a truism that technology is good - even if it creates winners and losers, it improves the world. Toby Ord argues that the conclusions about t…

Presentations — Benedict Evans

Every year, I produce a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. New in May 2025, ‘AI eats the world’.

The AI spending boom could have real consequences for the U.S. economy

As revisions to U.S. jobs numbers call into question economic growth, Big Tech is becoming an even more important part of American prosperity.

Import AI 452: Scaling laws for cyberwar; rising tides of AI automation; and a puzzle over gDP forecasting

How much could AI revolutionize the economy?