Two technological futures are competing for political and material priority: generative AI and the green transition. Benanav argues that while AI is marketed as a world-reordering breakthrough, its productivity gains…
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…
The Future Is Not Tech-Forward
On artificial intelligence, data centers, technological politics, and who gets to build the future.
The Future of Software Engineering Isn’t What You Think
Over the past two decades, I’ve watched software eat the world, then hardware catch up, then Generative AI reshape both at the same time…
The Missing Institution: A Global Dividend System for the Age of Transformative AI — Digitalist Papers
How do we share prosperity in society if work no longer sits at the center of people’s lives? In this essay, Anna Yelizarova explores one provocative possibility: a “global dividend.” If transformative AI shows little respect for national borders, with effects that spill across countries, then we ne
Automate the C-Suite - The Ideas Letter
Weatherby argues that Benanav’s and Morozov’s essays on AI and the left miss a deeper reality: Today’s AI is not a neutral tool operating within capitalism but the materialization of…
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...
AI as Normal Technology
The normal technology frame is about the relationship between technology and society. It rejects technological determinism, especially the notion of AI itself as an agent in determining its future. It is guided by lessons from past technological revolutions, such as the slow and uncertain nature of technology adoption and diffusion. It also emphasizes continuity between the past and the future trajectory of AI in terms of societal impact and the role of institutions in shaping this trajectory.
Field Theory: AI as Social Science Question, Object & Tool
Uses of advanced artificial intelligence are changing how societies organize labor, govern, produce knowledge, and make meaning. In light of these developments, this essay argues that AI models, tools, and systems pose three interrelated imperatives for social science: they demand renewed attention to social theories of how technology, human experience, and social order are entangled; they require study as objects of inquiry in their own right; and they offer capabilities that may transform—or upend—the practice of social investigation itself. From Weber’s analysis of rationalization to Du Bois’s study of technology and inequality to contemporary scholarship on algorithmic governance, the essay examines what social science distinctively offers: the capacity to historicize the apparently unprecedented, to trace connections across scales, and to center those most affected by technological change. It identifies how algorithmic systems are remaking the distribution of opportunity and risk as a central task of social inquiry and asks what futures social science might help bring into being.
Resetting on engineering expectations in the age of AI
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Everybody needs a personal AI policy. Just ask Hank Green.
How can we reap AI’s benefits without melting our brains in the process?
The Future of AI Should Serve People, Not Platforms - The Liquid Frontier
AI and the Republic of Science
AI promises to end scientific stagnation. But will it solve the right problem?
Generative AI for Pro-Democracy Platforms · From Novel Chemicals to Opera
Online discourse faces challenges in facilitating substantive and productive political conversations. Recent technologies have explored the potential of generative AI to promote civil discourse, encourage the development of mutual understanding in a discussion, produce . . .
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.
Something Big Is Happening
A personal note for non-tech friends and family on what AI is starting to change.
AI demands more engineering discipline. Not less
If you lived through the shift from handcrafted server pets to immutable infrastructure, you should sense something oddly familiar about what's happening now.
