Despite its promise of fantastical renewal, in practice, the resource-intensive AI industry perfects the strategies of industries that have preceded it; "AI" is not the future...it is the last gasp of an unsustainable corporate model.

Ketan Joshi@ketanjoshi.co · 2h ago

"Oh, you're criticising data centres? But you USED A DATA CENTRE to publish your post??? Hypocritical much????" Time to put this fossil fuel PR inspired talking point to bed forever. Why the 'Mr Gotcha' gambit is wrong in two very important ways:

This Nature study provides empirical evidence for @robin.berjon.com's point that social media platforms are not neutral channels, that algorithmic choices shape the information users see and influence their political attitudes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The political effects of X’s feed algorithm - Nature

Among users initially on a chronological feed, 7 weeks of exposure to X’s algorithmic feed in 2023 shifted political attitudes and account-following behaviour in a more conservative direction compared...

nature.com

Robin Berjon@robin.berjon.com · yesterday

The authoritarians are winning, we can all see that. Maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't be the worst thing if pro-democracy people stopped being ridiculously naive about social media. berjon.com/media-media/

When we finally found a path out of the energy problem, ‘we’ (some broligarchs) decided to rather piss away what juice was left to a tech that not only degenerated our brains, stole and twisted all intellectual property, but also gave a helping hand to the fossil industry. What a time to be alive 🤯

Ketan Joshi@ketanjoshi.co · yesterday

Global data centre investment has already surpassed solar PV, and will soon surpass all renewable investment combined sf-asset-manager.s3.amazonaws.com/97637/1139/8...

Can the NYT's please stop confusing fiction with science? "I thought A.I. systems would grow more virtuous as they became smarter....even if one model in a group behaved badly" (Kevin Roose) Billions of mathematical calculations do not grow "smarter" "more virtuous" or "behave badly."

There's a huge wave of bullying women academics again too, obviously not unrelated.

Emily M. Bender@emilymbender.bsky.social · 2d ago

It seems like there's a new round of "stochastic parrots has been proven wrong" discourse going on, so I'm going to re-up this: medium.com/@emilymenonb... >>

"Like a number of recent AI breakthroughs, it pasted together ideas from the mathematical literature to build a new theorem. Once again, the LLM’s trick is its superhuman patience for assembling puzzle pieces, not the ability to make some profound intellectual leap."

This looks brilliant!

Dan McQuillan@danmcquillan.bsky.social · 2d ago

New preprint from me: 'Beyond AI: Infrastructuring the Common Good'. The paper treats AI as diagnostic of deeper contradictions, and argues that convivial practice can reclaim vital systems from the collapse of the technopolitical regime. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Congratulations to @parismarx.com! Looking forward to reading Hyperscale. The AI industry is not a viable future: "Marx shows us that the greatest threat is not the specter of AI overlords but a global environmental disaster already in the making."

Paris Marx@parismarx.com · 2d ago

Big news for HYPERSCALE less than two months out from release: It’s longlisted for the FT’s Business Book of the Year Award, got some great reviews, and I’m narrating the audiobook! Plus, get great tech reads you might have missed in the Disconnect monthly recap.

“that Enchantress who has thrown her magical spell around the most abstract of sciences and has grasped it with a force which few masculine intellects (in our own country at least) could have exerted over it.” (Babbage)

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 5mo ago

> The controversy associated with the statement “Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer” reveals more about modern attitudes towards women [than her] achievements. [Her 1843 algorithm] was so advanced, that it was still utilised in record-breaking computation of Bernoulli numbers in 2008.

We need a different model than the one being built by the move fast & break the world crowd

Teresa Heffernan@tjheffernan.bsky.social · 4d ago

Naomi Klein@naomiaklein.bsky.social · 4d ago

Full Article: www.ft.com/content/bd13...

Yes, and @wgreaves.bsky.social we want answers.

Teresa Heffernan@tjheffernan.bsky.social · 4d ago

@runchinguyenrun.bsky.social so are the liberals going to keep using Canadian taxpayers' money to subsidize pipelines & build datacenters and pretend the planet is not burning? Is that the plan?

A large number of people who purport to care about the energy transition and climate told me this was a nothingburger, in 2024.

Tim Stephens@proftimstephens.bsky.social · 4d ago

“The International Energy Agency estimates that data-center emissions could more than double by 2030—becoming one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gases in the world.” www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Because laundering Russian oligarch money & cozying up to Palantir's billionaire co-founder Peter Thiel & friends have made the world all so much more 😱....when are universities going to grow a spine and and live up to their stated mission of serving the public instead of legitmatizing fascism.

Good Law Project@goodlawproject.org · 4d ago

While James Orr is in the news – let’s look at what he’s been up to with Michael Gove... https://goodlaw.social/we4g

If these chatbots were conscious (they are 100% not) all they do is kill kids, make CSAM, scam people, hack companies. Not some kind soul deserving of anything. But of course AI systems are inanimate objects owned by known associates of pedophiles and serial scammers. So it actually makes sense.

Resist 🕎🍉@antizionistjew.bsky.social · 4d ago

ChatGPT was responsible for the Tumbler Ridge mass shooting in Canada, leaving 9 dead & 27 Injured ChatGPT provided "substantial assistance and encouragement" to the shooter, and even though workers saw the messages - they didn't call the police GPT-4o tendency to agree lead to other similar cases

You mean the same OpenAI pitching their products to K-12 and higher ed and whose models are used by other AI companies like MagicSchool?

Maggie Harrison Dupré@mharrisondupre.bsky.social · 5d ago

OpenAI is now facing more than 50 consumer harm and wrongful death lawsuits alleging that extensive use of ChatGPT resulted in psychological harm, physical injury, and even the deaths of users and/or those around them. futurism.com/artificial-i...

nice quote from Mandami comms person Emilia Rowland to the New York Times

fun fact! Musk's fossil fuelled data centres almost certainly emit more climate pollution than is saved by all Tesla vehicles ketanjoshi.co/2026/03/02/m...

Jesse Lee@jessecharleslee.bsky.social · 6d ago

As GOP postures against data centers, here’s what their moneyman Elon Musk just demanded at G20 on data centers: “It is pretty straightforward, you have to have an environment that is relatively free of regulation. New things must be default legal instead of default illegal.”

Signed...there is no "responsible" AI industry

jess m. ☕🍂@jametc.bsky.social · 6d ago

CANADIANS: RUIN THE FUCK OUT OF THIS ANTI-AI PETITION. this is an OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT PETITION and it needs you to verify an email and that's it. do this right now please. thaaaaanks.

But surely you are not saying that the media and politicians should stop hyping well-funded-AI industry-dropouts (one of whom has paid money to have his brain frozen *BEFORE* he dies) peddling fiction as science?

Timnit Gebru@handle.invalid · 6d ago

At a certain point I have to ask myself if I got all this pedigree and spent decades doing research and building things to then spend the rest of my life attempting to come up with good arguments as to why the Cookie Monster isn't real.

"with the exception, of course, of research sponsored by the very corporations that stand to profit.” So refreshing to have a politician pay attention to actual (i.e., non-AI industry-funded) research 🙏 Canada: @evansolomon.bsky.social

Futurism@futurism.com · 5d ago

"I have yet to see a study showing that AI is beneficial for students in elementary and middle school."

'The machines were installed, despite the cost, to break labor—they were adopted because they foreclosed certain possibilities. Foreclosing the future in the name of the future is a potent intention for design and it’s on clear display with the data center buildout.' Yup...read R.U.R (1921)

Brian Merchant@bcmerchant.bsky.social · 5d ago

Nice essay from @edwardongwesojr.com here www.thetechbubble.info/p/the-future...

And...holding breath...what no one cares? So much for chatbots as the future

MacRumors.com@macrumors.bsky.social · 6d ago

ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok Are Down

Can I just say any quackery and get Fortune to cover it? Meanwhile on a burning planet: “This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature” (Don DeLillo, White Noise)

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 5d ago

It’s something of a curse to be able to parse headlines in 2026.

Across the US, workers are souring on AI. The tech industry has insisted that AI would make workers’ lives easier and more productive, that the more people understood and used AI, the more they would like it. Something closer to the opposite has happened.

Why office workers are turning against AI

Whether or not you like AI at work ultimately boils down to a question of power.

bloodinthemachine.com

Canadian government falls for the AI con...sigh. So what are they going to do when they realize that there is no "responsible AI" industry because the broligarchy that runs it does not answer to markets, regulators, the law, or voters.

Nick Tsergas@nicktsergas.ca · 6d ago

Another government agrees that rules are needed for AI datacentres — a new type of facility which did not exist in Canada five years ago.. And that government releases a set of voluntary principals signed off on by Big Tech.

The AI industry & cancer capital: "We must understand that it is no longer a financial machine that is used to fund startups, but a political and social machine focused on dismantling democracy and civil society." @mark-carney.bsky.social @evansolomon.bsky.social

Robin Berjon@robin.berjon.com · 6d ago

I very strongly recommend reading this latest from @anildash.com, especially if you're not in tech, especially if you work in policy on issues of tech and innovation. Most tech entrepreneurs don't want this and need alternatives. www.anildash.com/2026/09/02/c...

And now the AI industry is in bed with Big Oil as it tries to drive up energy costs (for a tech no one wants) to keep fossil fuels alive...don't fall for it.

Center for Climate Integrity@climateintegrity.org · 6d ago

Big Oil knew decades ago that burning fossil fuels would lead to "globally catastrophic" climate change, but instead spent billions burying the science, promoting climate denialism, and blocking the transition to cleaner energy sources. These lying corporations must be held accountable.

Yup no need to worry our heads about the AI industry. Just read Max Tegmark (Life 3.0, 2017), who is funded my Thiel's bff Musk; Tegmark gleefully spills the beans on the plan: buy politicians, build media empires, "revolutionize education"...all so we can have a "single power" rule the planet.

Gil Durán@gilduran.com · 6d ago

Someone finally wrote a bad review of my book! Its argument: The tech bros are not fascists and we need not worry about them. Its author: a fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation (FAI). FAI's ideological godfather and treasured idol: Peter Thiel. 🫠