One of the big takeaways from this talk is that hidden text can drive AI agent behaviour and I'm very much a fan of using this to (further) poison them. media.ccc.de/v/39c3-agent...

If you want high-quality, ethically-made transcripts, I recommend the wonderful people over at @aat-transcribes.bsky.social! They employ professional staff with years of experience, and will work with customers to find a solution that fits their budget. academicaudiotranscription.com

I had assumed using AI to justify layoffs was a straightforward weapon against labour, but this article suggests it may also be a signal to the market that layoffs aren't due to incompetence, but rather due to exciting technology deployed by forward-thinking executives. fortune.com/2026/01/07/a...

This piece asks what we'll do with all the excess computing infrastructure once the AI bubble finally bursts. Quoth IBM's CEO: "no way you’re going to get a return on that because $8 trillion of CapEx means you need $800 billion profit just to pay for the interest" www.evalapply.org/posts/after-...

Aragón defies Amazon: Historic dispute against mega datacentres It's not a "cloud," it's a threat. Amazon's gigantic data centers are hijacking Aragón's water, energy, and future. TuNubeSecaMiRio have launched a crowdfunding campaign to support legal action: www.migranodearena.org/reto/frena-a...

Just like many of the tech narratives, removal of friction is seen as an end unto itself, and becomes this unchallenged dogma (like efficiency, growth, etc), so I really enjoyed this piece by @kjezermorton.bsky.social advocating *for* friction! www.thecut.com/article/broo...

I loved this conversation with @drsyedmustafaali.bsky.social on the Adnan Husain Show! 🔥 www.youtube.com/live/GEZQXb8...

Modern cars are rolling surveillance platforms, collecting data on the occupants of the vehicle and everything else within the range of their sensors. And wherever surveillance goes, advertising isn't far behind. 🤬 adguard.com/en/blog/cars...

Oh, how much should I pretend to be surprised by this completely foreseeable consequence of how this technology is being deployed? 🙄 www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...

The overt actions of the Trump regime are making its authoritarian nature hard to deny. This is politechs in its rawest form. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

This piece from Cory Doctorow (which is the script of a speech he recently gave) on understanding the AI bubble collects a bunch of ideas he's been developing in his blog and wraps them up in one great package. It's a 20 minute read, but worth every minute of that! pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/p...

I was looking for some creator that could explain AI and tech in simple ways so I can share with non-tech folks. I shared this video with someone who knows nothing how tech works, and excited about getting a new fridge with a screen on it). He said it was easy to follow! youtu.be/DSIH-ol29bk

🧵I'd love to get some opinions on ethical STT models (Speech To Text) for transcribing audio. As part of the Politechs project, we're trying to build an ethical podcast production stack, and one piece of which is machine transcription producing a rough transcript which a person can clean up.

22% of Ireland's electricity is consumed by datacentres, and the EU's AI Continent Action Plan proposes tripling datacentre capacity by 2030. 🤯 And speaking of bad political frames, "AI sovereignity". 🤮 www.techpolicy.press/what-ireland...

@fozmeadows.bsky.social Hi Foz! I really enjoyed your "Against AI" piece! We'd love to interview you to get a writer's perspective on the impacts of AI and how we can resist these bullshit machines and the powerful political project behind them. Is this something you would be interested in?

As we gear up for Season 2 of Politechs, we want to share some of the articles we've been reading. You can subscribe to our news feed with your RSS reader of choice, and be sure to tell us what you think about what we share! politechs.dev/news.rss

Rob Pike is also fucking angry and fucking wants us to know it.

#Clojure creator @richhickey.bsky.social is feeling the Luddite spirit this holiday season! 🔥 gist.github.com/richhickey/e... 🔥

For our season finale, we're joined by the one and only Brian Merchant (@bcmerchant.bsky.social) to discuss how we can take lessons and inspiration from the original Luddites and apply them to resistance against AI and Big Tech more generally today. politechs.dev/episodes/ai-...

As we work on the season finale, we'd like to share an interview we did for another podcast that made us realise that Season 1 of Politechs had to be about AI. Social scientist and researcher Anna Colom joins us to talk about the real risks of AI. politechs.dev/episodes/ai-...

Automation is usually presented to us as an unalloyed good, a way to remove tedium from our lives so we can spend our time on the things that truely matter. But is this really the case? politechs.dev/episodes/ai-...

When you're trying to convince somebody of something (for example, to examine whether AI is a good thing), you need to know your audience. In Episode 6, we look at programmers and thinking through how to talk to the various audiences within that big tent. politechs.dev/episodes/ai-...

We’re a little behind on production, so Episode 6 won’t come out until tomorrow. Sorry for the delay! 🙏🏻

If anyone is interested in volunteering to transcribe an episode, please send a DM here or email [email protected]. The process involves cleaning up an automated transcript, and we have tooling to help do that. As a bonus, you get early access to the episode you’re transcribing! 😀

Why do so many people buy into the narrative that AI is inevitable so we might as well get on board (or throw up our hands in despair)? We get to the bottom of this, realise that Skynet might happen after all, and channel the great Lina Khan. Check out Episode 5: politechs.dev/episodes/ai-...

We're joined this week by Dr. Chris Gilliard (@hypervisible.bsky.social), Co-Director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute to talk about what generative AI means for surveillance, and how this technology disproportionately harms marginalised groups: politechs.dev/episodes/ai-...

Whilst everyone has an opinion about AI, there are certain top-level narratives driving the hype bubble. We look at the Doomer / Booster divide and peek behind the curtain to see which corporations and people are pushing these narratives and what they have to gain. politechs.dev/episodes/ai-...

Episode 2 is out! Our societies are necessarily based on trust, but how do we decide what institutions, people, and technologies to place our trust in? And why have we collectively decided that since "computers don't make mistakes", they are always worthy of our trust? politechs.dev/episodes/ai-...

Episode 1 is out! Join us as we lay down a Luddite argument against AI from the perspective of software engineers and talk about how to have good faith discussions with people who might not see or be willing to acknowledge the real dangers of AI. politechs.dev/episodes/ai-...

In recent years, there has been a desire from certain high-profile tech companies for an "apolitical workplace". This in itself is a political act, designed to suppress the power of tech workers. They know that politics is inextricable from tech. And now so do you. politechs.dev