This Machine Kills

In this installment of What the Fuck is Happening in America: floating “objects” keep getting shot down; a train carrying the toxic gas vinyl chloride has turned Ohio into a sacrifice zone; the Biden administration ramps up its investments in industrial policy, but in such a way that apparently the entire purpose of the economy is to try incentivizing private companies, with tax credits and subsidiaries, into directly competing with China. Sorry folks, the economy can’t do anything else for any other reason *shrug*

Stuff we reference:

••• Derailed Ohio Train Carried Toxic Ingredient for “Worst” Kind of Plastic https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2023/02/derailment-east-palestine-ohio-train-carried-toxic-chemical-vinyl-chloride-plastic-pvc/

••• America’s government is spending lavishly to revive manufacturing https://www.economist.com/briefing/2023/02/02/americas-government-is-spending-lavishly-to-revive-manufacturing

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

Jumping off an FT op-ed on venture capital and tech hype – which aligns great with TMK thought – we discuss the value and risk models of venture capitalism, then get into the emerging market structures and dynamics for generative AI. It’s not just a web3 redux. We end with Ted Chiang’s fantastic article on lossy compression as an analogy for large-language models.

Some stuff we reference:

••• The new Current Thing for VCs mourning the implosion of Web3 https://www.ft.com/content/83807cad-5f2c-4c35-a4ff-e9df5cbd3505

••• Generative AI: A Creative New World | report by Sequoia Capital https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/generative-ai-a-creative-new-world/

••• ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We get some Parisian updates and stories from Ed. Then we enter the mind palace of a libertarian who, with all the annoying pretension of a philosophy major, tried to make ChatGPT say the word. We wrap up with a discussion of the “year of efficiency” in Silicon Valley as the biggest four tech companies are rewarded with over $800 billion in market cap for making massive job cuts, massive stock buybacks, and massive investments in AI.

Some stuff we reference

••• Big Tech groups disclose $10bn in charges from job culls and cost cutting https://www.ft.com/content/9daf27f6-dde7-40d8-b01d-33b70844aa69

••• Tech’s Biggest Companies Discover Austerity, to the Relief of Investors https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/technology/big-tech-earnings-austerity.html

••• Tech's Elite Hates Labor https://ez.substack.com/p/techs-elite-hates-labor

••• Big Tech companies use cloud computing arms to pursue alliances with AI groups https://www.ft.com/content/5b17d011-8e0b-4ba1-bdca-4fbfdba10363

••• Google reveals plans for Bard chatbot as AI tech race heats up https://www.ft.com/content/66fad3e0-f530-48c1-984c-82578274ce7a

••• Microsoft Throws a Coming-Out Party for A.I. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/07/technology/microsoft-ai-chatgpt-bing.html

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Grab TMK gear: https://www.bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

Part 1 –– We welcome returning champ Nick Chavez – mechanical engineer, marxist political economist – for a long conversation about his new essay examining the real nitty-gritty aspects of production and labor, knowledge and management. Time to step down from the ivory tower and onto the shop floor. We talk extensively about different modes of manufacturing and the stratification of technical expertise within capitalist production – and what needs to be kept, changed, and abolished in a transition to communist production.

••• Nick’s essay: https://brooklynrail.org/2023/12/field-notes/Technical-Expertise-and-Communist-Production

••• Nick’s new blog: https://designformanufracture.wordpress.com/

••• Nick’s new twitter: https://twitter.com/DFManufracture

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Grab TMK gear: https://www.bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We dip into the a16z omnibus of predictions for the tech industry in 2023. Time to learn what the thought masters of the universe are trying to wishcast into existence because they have a material interest in making them happen.

Stuff we reference:

••• Big Ideas in Tech for 2023: An a16z Omnibus https://a16z.com/2022/12/15/big-ideas-in-tech-2023/

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Grab TMK gear: https://www.bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

Ed takes us on a guided tour of Odin Intelligence, SweepWizard, CloudFactory and other tech bullshit that sounds like embarrassing nonsense while also contributing in their own way to monetizing, mobilizing, and heightening the eschaton.

Stuff we reference:

••• Police Contractor That Promised to Track Homeless People Hacked https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgyjnq/odin-intelligence-hacked

••• Crime App ‘Citizen’ Fires Overseas $2 an Hour Workers https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkg5nk/citizen-fires-overseas-kenya-nepal-workers-cloudfactory

••• CNET pauses publishing AI-written stories after disclosure controversy https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/20/23564311/cnet-pausing-ai-articles-bot-red-ventures

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Grab TMK gear: https://www.bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

It’s been a while since we’ve done a real reading series. So we spend time with a group of rogue entrepreneurs who are taking it upon themselves to save the planet by geoengineering the atmosphere.

Stuff we reference

••• A startup says it’s begun releasing particles into the atmosphere, in an effort to tweak the climate https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/24/1066041/a-startup-says-its-begun-releasing-particles-into-the-atmosphere-in-an-effort-to-tweak-the-climate/

••• Saudi Aramco bets on being the last oil major standing https://www.ft.com/content/513b770b-836b-472b-a058-3e4a95437c69

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Grab TMK gear: https://www.bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We spend more time talking about the political economy of AI – the production and application of AI within a capitalist system and how it might (and should) differ within a socialist or communist system. We pay particular attention to discussing the growing and specialized industries for producing, supporting, propping up, and stepping in for AI in a variety of applications. Living labor creates the machinery of dead labor, which then acts as an agent of capital to discipline and dominate living labor, making it more machine-like, thus turning the living into the undead.

Stuff we reference

••• Seven questions to ask about AI https://maxread.substack.com/p/seven-questions-to-ask-about-ai

••• Human_Fallback https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-44/essays/human_fallback/

••• The Worldwide Data Annotation Tools Industry is Expected to Reach $13.2 Billion by 2030 https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220824005423/en/The-Worldwide-Data-Annotation-Tools-Industry-is-Expected-to-Reach-13.2-Billion-by-2030---ResearchAndMarkets.com

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Grab TMK gear: https://www.bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

They don’t make things like they used to… No really. They don’t. We discuss how a perfect storm of things like stagnant wages, rising inflation, declining profits, expedited production, among other factors have led to a real drop in the quality of consumer goods along with generally lowered expectations of living conditions and technological innovations.

Stuff we reference

••• Your stuff is actually worse now https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23529587/consumer-goods-quality-fast-fashion-technology

••• Why Tech Billionaires Want to Shape Our Future w/ Rose Eveleth https://techwontsave.us/episode/149_why_tech_billionaires_want_to_shape_our_future_w_rose_eveleth

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Grab TMK gear: https://www.bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)

We offer some thoughts on where the tech sector is heading right now, how the markets are performing amidst a down turn, and what big trends for tech and capital are looking strong in the new year.

Stuff we reference

••• A new era: the end of cheap money https://www.ft.com/content/6d312b6c-9f74-4816-ad7e-7e797c5e0f6b

••• Silicon Valley start-ups race for debt deals in funding crunch https://www.ft.com/content/d12a4baa-53c6-4256-b125-d25622f9555f

••• Silicon Valley staff rush to offload start-up shares as valuations plummet https://www.ft.com/content/7178364f-1f0d-46e4-9692-b648ea258d06

••• Private Markets Don’t Like to Go Down https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-04/private-markets-don-t-like-to-go-down#footnote-1

••• Forecast: Startup M&A Could Pick Up In 2023 As Fundraising Tightens Further https://news.crunchbase.com/ma/startup-forecast-2023-fundraising-venture-valuations/

••• A New Area of A.I. Booms, Even Amid the Tech Gloom https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/technology/generative-ai-chatgpt-investments.html

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills

Grab TMK gear: https://www.bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)