Cory Doctorow says AI is ordinary technology wrapped in a $1.4T bubble
Elijah_Meeks · x · 2026-07-29
Cory Doctorow’s latest Pluralistic essay argues that AI is not especially good or evil as a technology, but is extraordinary as an economic pathology.
He says boosters have already poured more than $1.4T into AI, largely in the past year, while betting on a future where workers are displaced and wages fall. The essay argues that the whole bubble depends on monopolies and cartels being able to degrade products without facing normal market or regulatory consequences.
Doctorow’s broader point is that AI is being framed as a unique force, when in practice it is another technology wrapped in a historically large financial and labor-market distortion.
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