[Unlocking this one from the paywall] We start by talking about Ed’s new sci-fi / cosmic horror story in the latest issue of Logic(s). We cruise by the aborted cage fight between Zuck and Musk. Then somehow make our way to a long discussion of behavioral insurance technologies and start sketching out a political theory of insurance and its institutional forms in society. Stuff we reference: ••• The Circle | Ed's new story https://logicmag.io/supa-dupa-skies/the-circle/ Subscribe to hear more ana...
Jul 14, 2023•1 hr 15 min
We start off with the very funny legal letter that Musk’s lawyers sent to Zuckerberg threatening legal action for Threads stealing IP from Twitter. Then we get into reporting on the rampant use of psychedelics in Silicon Valley. But they aren’t taking drugs for cool reasons, but rather to become more productive and creative with microdosing. This is yet another way to chemically create the most productive workforce, who are also more resilient against the soul crushing brutality of a capitalist ...
Jul 13, 2023•8 min
We look into a new startup – Inflection AI – that has raised $1.5 billion, was co-founded by tech elites, and just released an AI chatbot, Pi, that is meant to be your ultra friendly, personal companion, coach, creative partner and more. We place our bet that this won’t be the last time we hear about Inflection AI. Everything about this company — its funding partners, founders’ pedigrees, AI product, and public mission – points to Inflection AI becoming even bigger and unavoidable. Stuff we refe...
Jul 07, 2023•1 hr 14 min
We start by talking about Ed’s new sci-fi / cosmic horror story in the latest issue of Logic(s). We cruise by the aborted cage fight between Zuck and Musk. Then somehow make our way to a long discussion of behavioral insurance technologies and start sketching out a political theory of insurance and its institutional forms in society. Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.c...
Jun 30, 2023•8 min
We are joined by Alex Sammon – politics reporter at Slate – to discuss one of the best pieces of gonzo reporting in recent memory. Alex journeyed into the heart of darkness at the center of American capitalism: the National Automobile Dealers Association. We discuss why a critical analysis of car dealers is necessary for understanding the real composition of class power and wealth in society. The politics of how car dealerships became a network of deeply entrenched fiefdoms with the power of kin...
Jun 27, 2023•1 hr 12 min
We get into Ed’s new column for The Nation, what he’s got planned, the long arc of arguments he’s building, and how the key to good tech criticism is to talk about technology by using it as a way to talk about other things. After a while discussing the hows and whys of good old historical materialist analysis, things then go off the rails in the best ways. Ed’s column: https://www.thenation.com/authors/edward-ongweso-jr/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes ever...
Jun 22, 2023•8 min
We are joined by Antony Loewenstein — author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World — to discuss his extensive reporting on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the policing tactics and surveillance technologies that are tested on Palestinians before sold as part of lucrative global export industry, and how the dynamics of occupation never stay within their cordoned zones but always expand to capture increasingly more people and places. ••• ...
Jun 19, 2023•1 hr 17 min
The tech asset bubble is now so massive that its reality distortion field is affecting the major indices like the S&P 500, warping their ability to serve as useful signals and indicators about the economy, and causing passive investors that peg trillions of dollars to these indices to become mechanically over-exposed to a handful of tech companies. All our fates are increasingly and intricately tied to the volatile financials of a few corporations. Very cool! Stuff we reference ••• Rise of t...
Jun 15, 2023•6 min
We are joined by Auni Ahsan and Stephen McMurtry – organizers with the Alphabet Workers Union – to talk about the nuts and bolts of organizing at a major tech company, the development of AWU and its relationship with Communications Workers of America, what it means to be a tech worker today, the conditions and issues for labor in the sector, the purpose of organized labor power more broadly, the challenges and opportunities for AWU as they continue to grow. ••• AWU https://alphabetworkersunion.o...
Jun 08, 2023•1 hr 34 min
We take a deeper look at the political ecology of the “forever chemicals” that are integral to the existing microchip manufacturing process, the very serious damage they are wreaking on human health and the environment, the industrial interests that are aggressively pushing back against any attempt to regulate these chemicals, and the CEO of Chemours who has come forth as an ardent defender of the polymers in our blood. Stuff we reference ••• The crackdown on risky chemicals that could derail th...
Jun 07, 2023•5 min
We dig into the technological theology that has been taking hold in Silicon Valley and its orbital communities – in various ways, different degrees, and over time. The components of this theology are nicely compiled into an acronym coined by Timnit Gebru and Émile Torres: Tescreal – transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, longtermism. Stuff we reference: ••• We need to examine the beliefs of today’s tech luminaries https://www.ft.com/content/edc...
Jun 01, 2023•1 hr 20 min
We get into the Writers Guild of America strike, why this is an important labor action to watch, the terrible conditions they are striking again, the mindset of the professional class of capital managers that control “content” production, and how the potential use of AI in tv/movies follows from already existing practices like “mini-rooms,” which brought gig economy dynamics to the work of writing. Stuff we reference: ••• As the Writers’ Strike Enters Its Third Week, the Studios Aren’t Budging...
May 30, 2023•9 min
Cory Doctorow — returning champion, friend of the show, and author of the new novel Red Team Blues — joins us to chat about fiction (science), finance (crypto), forensics (accounting), and much more. You never knew forensic accounting could be so radical and thrilling, but Red Team Blues is an immanent critique of techno-financial capitalism in the guise of a page ripping novel. We cover a lot of ground, all of it fascinating, as we always do when Cory comes on TMK. ••• Buy Red Team Blues: https...
May 24, 2023•1 hr 29 min
We dig into the technological theology that has been taking hold in Silicon Valley and its orbital communities – in various ways, different degrees, and over time. The components of this theology are nicely compiled into an acronym coined by Timnit Gebru and Émile Torres: Tescreal – transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, longtermism. Stuff we reference: ••• We need to examine the beliefs of today’s tech luminaries https://www.ft.com/content/edc...
May 19, 2023•8 min
We are joined by Jonathan Guyer – senior foreign policy writer at Vox – to discuss his reporting on how the intimate relationship between Silicon Valley and Saudi Arabia is getting even deeper and weirder. We get into the geopolitics, the soft power, and the reputation laundering of Saudi Arabia – and its intersections with the cynical values and capital flows in Silicon Valley. Jonathan’s twitter: https://twitter.com/mideastXmidwest Jonathan’s articles: ••• How Saudi money returned to Silicon V...
May 16, 2023•1 hr 16 min
We spike our blood pressure with a discussion about recent reporting on the systems used by health insurers to automate rejecting claims. It’s one of those classic situations we all know and love: human doctors rubber stamping algorithmic decisions in a system created by a private equity ghoul to save major insurers a few dollars by making the lives of real people significantly worse. Stuff we reference ••• How Cigna Saves Millions by Having Its Doctors Reject Claims Without Reading Them https:/...
May 14, 2023•5 min
We get into Evgeny Morozov’s latest essay on the geopolitical interests and military neoliberalism that’s really driving the AI arms race. Morozov traces today’s developments back to the Cold War – not just as a metaphor, but by showing how many of the same people and institutions are still in positions of power. To understand the America vs China framing of technological competition, which is now so dominant and two-dimensional in the discourse about AI, we must see how it is stoked by people l...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 27 min
We cruise into the drive-thru of Taco Bell’s Innovation Lab and discuss the strange sublime of food that has been industrially engineered to hit every pleasure center in your brain, while also profaning all this is holy and natural in this world. We are awe-struck by the productive capacity and scientific innovation of capital, while also in total horror of what it has produced and innovated. And yes, I will add a Doritos Loco Taco to my meal. Thanks. Article we discuss ••• Taco Bell’s Innovatio...
May 03, 2023•7 min
We are very pleased to be joined by Sarah Myers West— managing director of AI Now Institute and former Senior Advisor on AI to the FTC—to discuss their excellent new report, 2023 Landscape: Confronting Tech Power. We lay out how the dominance of Big Tech is built on a triforce of advantages: data, compute, geopolitical. These advantages serve as both core pillars and core chokepoints for corporate control over AI. And if we hope to overturn their power, then we must undermine these advantages. T...
Apr 28, 2023•1 hr 16 min
Returning champion David A. Banks joins us for a supersized discussion about his new book, The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America. How do cities have to act like social media influencers to attract new flows of capital? How are fundamental dynamics of capitalist urban development — growth machines, rent gaps, spatial fixes, destructive renovation, entrepreneurial competition — updated and upgraded to fit into the techno-financial conditions of today? Why does every do...
Apr 23, 2023•1 hr 56 min
We talk about the federal intelligence agencies being big fans of great books and movies, and writing about them in their little newsletters. Then move on to a big discussion about how the tech industry has been buoyed by a whole lot of nothing: zero interest rates, zero marginal costs, zero regulation, zero oversight. Those zeroes are key to the political economic foundation of Silicon Valley. And now – due to social, financial, and technological factors – the zeroes are increasing slightly. Wi...
Apr 18, 2023•6 min
We go in-depth on an article that has not received the attention it is due: an investigation into an automated welfare fraud system in the Netherlands, which is based on unprecedented access to the machine learning model, its training data, and operational handbooks. Through a deep analysis of the systems mechanics, this investigation goes beyond validating what we already know to be true about how such algorithms discriminate. It shows how these systems are complex and targeted in their discrim...
Apr 14, 2023•1 hr 28 min
We cruise through a few topics: talk about the anti-China alliance between Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill pushing to ban TikTok; the bizarre post-mortem on SPACs published by their biggest booster, Chamath Palihapitiya; and the regular beat of people having no idea how to understand AI, while also being absolutely positive that they can harness it to [fix democracy]. Articles we discuss ••• Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill Build an Anti-China Alliance https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-...
Apr 11, 2023•8 min
It’s a fan cam episode for our favorite tech columnist, Brian Merchant, who had two pieces come out recently that are back-to-back bangers. First is about why all the people making and selling AI keep talking about being afraid of their own creations. It’s Frankenstein meets sorcerer's apprentice but as a marketing strategy for their own power (and their unique ability to control that power). Second is about what all these people should actually be afraid of. As history shows us, there is more t...
Apr 07, 2023•1 hr 23 min
We give ourselves a concussion by talking about yet another opinion essay about AI written by three “experts” and published by a major newspaper. How is AI doing neuro-linguistic programming? What happens when your analysis is all idealism, no materialism, all superstructure, no base? Will AI soon use its godlike powers to hack civilization and create militant groups at its command just by telling us the right story? Wait, you’re telling me we have to take this shit seriously because the authors...
Apr 04, 2023•6 min
We are joined by Abeba Birhane — Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at the Mozilla Foundation — for a critical discussion about the release of GPT-4 and OpenAI. We also get into the excellent work that Abeba and colleagues have done mapping the specific values encoded into, and the surveillance pipeline that influences, the vast majority of AI/ML research. ••• Abeba’s twitter: https://twitter.com/Abebab ••• Abeba’s paper – The Values Encoded in Machine Learning Research https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullH...
Mar 30, 2023•1 hr 19 min
We discuss the clear and present danger throughout the global financial system, with crises happening in the banking sector that have not been seen since the 2008 crash. However, these are not sudden and surprising explosions—at least not to industry and regulatory insiders—they are instead the slow motion ticking of bombs that are under review. We also get further into the failures of the VC industry and the fact that reforms—even severe ones that cut deep—are not enough to fix an industry, let...
Mar 23, 2023•7 min
We've unlocked this episode for the free feed. It's been a long time since we’ve seen a good old fashioned bank run lead to the collapse of a venerable financial institution, but leave it to Silicon Valley to rediscover something old and call it new again. We are joined by Brian Merchant — LA Times tech columnist and author of Blood in the Machine — for a post-mortem on Silicon Valley Bank, breakdown its events and effects, and hold Ed to account for his incitements to violence against the most ...
Mar 23, 2023•1 hr 14 min
Been a long time since we’ve seen a good old fashioned bank run lead to the collapse of a venerable financial institution, but leave it to Silicon Valley to rediscover something old and call it new again. We are joined by Brian Merchant—LA Times tech columnist and author of Blood in the Machine—for a post-mortem on Silicon Valley Bank, breakdown its events and effects, and hold Ed to account for his incitements to violence against the most marginalized and traumatized people of them all: venture...
Mar 18, 2023•8 min
We are joined by Nick Sever – author of the new book Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation – to discuss his excellent ethnographic research on the creation of algorithmic recommendation systems. Nick spent a long time getting to really know the people who make these systems and his book offers so much original, granular detail about the various practices, theories, and relationships that influence the engineers behind these algorithms. Nick’s book also contains extre...
Mar 17, 2023•1 hr 27 min
