Author, journalist, & activist Cory Doctorow joins Bad Faith to discuss his latest book, Picks & Shovels, the utility of fiction as a vehicle to expose scams and create urgency around political action, enshitification, and why so many people misunderstand the threat of AI.
Yes, the maximisation of profit... In many respects, that's one of the major issues. Monetizing everything is just evil, be it from the point of view of selling or buying. Companies trying to patent the living... And now with AI, it just seems that the metastasization rate is just going to speed up.
Sometimes I wish that there were a social utility index for jobs that could be used to weigh on the wages that are made. I sort of realise that it's very complex, but somehow I don't think we should just cave in to that complexity, which is in many ways our own making. Perhaps we should start by taking stock of what we have, what our resources and potential are, try to decide what we'd want (safety, health, understanding and some happiness would be a good start) and then figure out how we can get there, even if it means changing it all, starting with ourselves. I know I must sound silly and naive, but I can't say I'm finding a lot of more inspiring approaches out there.
To go back to AI, I heard myself advise my 14-year old son to use AI to ask it to proof read and explain the mistakes on an essay he has to write for his German class. He's not likely to get any help from me (I can't speak German) and his teacher could be better. But it somehow hurt to tell him that, almost in spite of myself.
I signed up for a workshop on AI in teaching / learning in the university where I teach and I'm curious of what's going to come out of it.
This is what makes investors and bosses slobber so hard for AI â a "productivity" boost that arises from taking away the bargaining power of workers so that they can be made to labor under worse conditions for less money. The efficiency gains of automation aren't just about using fewer workers to achieve the same output â it's about the fact that the workers you fire in this process can be used as a threat against the remaining workers: "Do your job and shut up or I'll fire you and give your job to one of your former colleagues who's now on the breadline."
This has been at the heart of labor fights over automation since the Industrial Revolution, when skilled textile workers took up the Luddite cause because their bosses wanted to fire them and replace them with child workers snatched from Napoleonic War orphanages: (...)
I think what bothers me most about the whole AI hype is the question of meaning/purpose. When AI starts replacing all the things that are integral to my daily life there comes a point where it is no longer useful but just redundant. I mean, I like the daily rhythm of cooking, cleaning, getting the kid's lunch packed for school, earning my money at a craft, saving up for a project, realising it, etc.
There are some really good applications for the tech - The Gates foundation has some good ideas about medical system access and general health stuff - imagine having your own doctor advice available all the time. I've used it for some coding, but have been generally disappointed - I'm a good logic planner, but a poor coder, so I thought AI would do better with my logic inputs, but it turns out, AI uses averages so it's an average coder, and I am just barely below average (makes me shudder to think of the bad coders). The code it returns works, but it's often inefficient and hardly elegant (like my own!).
My real issue is that it is being run/controlled by billionaires and corporations who are simply looking for ways to monetize everything. I get the profit motive, but they are shoehorning everything into it, and missing some real opportunities for the technology because they can't figure out how to make a nickel off of it. Even the good ideas they are pursuing are going to be hampered by their efforts to maximize profits.
I think what bothers me most about the whole AI hype is the question of meaning/purpose. When AI starts replacing all the things that are integral to my daily life there comes a point where it is no longer useful but just redundant. I mean, I like the daily rhythm of cooking, cleaning, getting the kid's lunch packed for school, earning my money at a craft, saving up for a project, realising it, etc.
Good point. Musk, especially has been asking them to let him do X ;)
That argument, everybody else is doing it /going to do it, is terrible. Funny how they (OpenAI and the like) seem to start minding about intellectual property when Deepseek was released... Don't do unto me what I did unto you...
If doing the right thing 'kills' your business model, then it shouldn't be a business.
Also to add: This industry in general has fallen back on the "you have to let us do X (bad thing) because if you don't, everyone else will do X(bad thing) anyway and we'll be way behind" for a lot of the stupid things they have done along the way so far. It's sort of a "we let the cat out of the bag, so now you just have to deal with loose cats" argument. It lacks any accountability and makes these guys look especially awful.
Good point. Musk, especially has been asking them to let him do X ;)
That argument, every body else is doing it /going to do it, is terrible. Funny how they (OpenAI and the like) seem to start minding about intellectual property when Deepseek was released... Don't do unto me what I did unto you...
If doing the right thing 'kills' your business model, then it shouldn't be a business.
Also to add: This industry in general has fallen back on the "you have to let us do X (bad thing) because if you don't, everyone else will do X(bad thing) anyway and we'll be way behind" for a lot of the stupid things they have done along the way so far. It's sort of a "we let the cat out of the bag, so now you just have to deal with loose cats" argument. It lacks any accountability and makes these guys look especially awful.
If doing the right thing 'kills' your business model, then it shouldn't be a business.
Also to add: This industry in general has fallen back on the "you have to let us do X (bad thing) because if you don't, everyone else will do X(bad thing) anyway and we'll be way behind" for a lot of the stupid things they have done along the way so far. It's sort of a "we let the cat out of the bag, so now you just have to deal with loose cats" argument. It lacks any accountability and makes these guys look especially awful.
If doing the right thing 'kills' your business model, then it shouldn't be a business.
Also to add: This industry in general has fallen back on the "you have to let us do X (bad thing) because if you don't, everyone else will do X(bad thing) anyway and we'll be way behind" for a lot of the stupid things they have done along the way so far. It's sort of a "we let the cat out of the bag, so now you just have to deal with loose cats" argument. It lacks any accountability and makes these guys look especially awful.
Estonia eschews phone bans in schools and takes leap into AI
Country at top of education charts aims to equip students and teachers with âworld-class artificial intelligence skillsâ
certainly can "augment" the school experience, which is more than just academics, but also socializing kids.
obviously some efficiencies could be generated, eg higher student/teacher ratios.
as for childcare, there are a lot cheaper ways to do that.
There aren't many childcare options that are cheaper than school. Before my son started kindergarten we were spending more per month on daycare than we were on our mortgage. But, yes, I can see AI working as an "augmentation" for things like student/teacher ratios and the like, if thoughtfully implemented. It couldn't (and shouldn't) replace human teachers - especially for younger students - because that interaction and connection is very important, but as a "tool" for teachers and students it could be very helpful and beneficial.
In my (limited) experience, when a kid wants to learn, you can pretty much use any method and it'll work out (I know I'm exaggerating, but I'm not that far off either. Hell, some kids learn despite their teachers!). I tried Duolingo myself, but I thought it was rote and I just hate digital bells and whistles that tell me I haven't achieved my objective or that I could do this or that, but that's just me.
Re AI and teaching, I think it will definitely be easier to pretend that the education system's working if AI is used instead of teachers.
Just to put things in perspective, where I teach (Bachelor's degree), students have a super wide variety of subject matters, including chemistry.
They do lab sessions all year round, usually some preparation involved before-hand, the lab session itself, and then a report on what they did. My chemistry colleagues have done what I think is a good job at setting it up. Students have prep activities on the uni's digital workspace, they're with the teacher and lab tech through the session, work in pairs and their reports are graded and given back so that they can see what they got right or wrong. At the end of the year, they have a graded lab session, which is randomly selected from the pool of all lab sessions, and my colleagues have also made videos to help students revise. (sorry for the lengthy context)
A couple of weeks ago, I hear students complain about the graded lab session, so I ask them what the problem is, and they tell me it was hard. I make the points that they had done all of the experiments and lab work in previous sessions, that they were well equipped to revise... And that's when one of them said, "Sir, you don't understand, even with work, it would have been difficult"... So unless AI can distribute candy, or drugs, or whatever it is that students find rewarding, I really don't see how it's going to help them any better than a teacher would.
certainly can "augment" the school experience, which is more than just academics, but also socializing kids.
obviously some efficiencies could be generated, eg higher student/teacher ratios.
as for childcare, there are a lot cheaper ways to do that.
Clumsily stated but uncomfortably accurate. Lots of families would have to sacrifice half their income.
Approximately zero of my school time was actually geared toward how I learn best, even though in grade school, I was guinea pigged with the ITA alphabet (I could already read in kindergarten so it was lost on me but other kids got it and were probably (?) better off for it. In 3rd grade, our new building had no walls between the classrooms, and 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 were all lumped together and then divided into 4 clusters for each subject so there were really 12 grades in grades 1-6, and we'd skip around based on what we were better at. So imagine 120 different lesson plans for 120 kids instead of 12 lesson plans.
I think it could really be great. I might even try DuoLingo if it's not rote. I need it.
Some newspapers around the country, including the Chicago Sun-Times and at least one edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer have published a syndicated summer book list that includes made-up books by famous authors.
Chilean American novelist Isabel Allende never wrote a book called Tidewater Dreams, described in the "Summer reading list for 2025" as the author's "first climate fiction novel."
Percival Everett, who won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, never wrote a book called The Rainmakers, supposedly set in a "near-future American West where artificially induced rain has become a luxury commodity."
Only five of the 15 titles on the list are real. (...)
This is a list designed for people who pretend to have read books over the summer
Mind you, you can probably ask AI to pitch you a summary for that non-existent book.
I've read about this in the Guardian, too. They also have an interesting article on a book about Sam Altman (Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination, by Karen Hao ) and while I'm at it, another on removing "safeguards" from AI.
I'm biased, but I find this comforting. De-bugging in another sense. I find it striking that consent is now rightly regarded as an imperative but that it somehow escapes the realm of data digging AI. Thanks, Proclivities.
Some newspapers around the country, including the Chicago Sun-Times and at least one edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer have published a syndicated summer book list that includes made-up books by famous authors.
Chilean American novelist Isabel Allende never wrote a book called Tidewater Dreams, described in the "Summer reading list for 2025" as the author's "first climate fiction novel."
Percival Everett, who won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, never wrote a book called The Rainmakers, supposedly set in a "near-future American West where artificially induced rain has become a luxury commodity."
Only five of the 15 titles on the list are real. (...)
