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PODCAST

This Machine Kills

This Machine Kills

A podcast about technology and political economy /// Agitprop against innovation and capital /// Hosted by Jathan Sadowski and Edward Ongweso Jr., Produced by Jereme Brown /// Hello friends and enemies Listen anywhere that fine podcasts are distributed. Subscribe at patreon.com/thismachinekills to get premium episodes every week.

technology

All Episodes

00:08:10

Patreon Preview – 374. Bigger is Not Better in AI

This Machine Kills ·

2024/10/10

Bringing together a few news items, we analyze the politics of scale in AI. First, OpenAI has one of the largest funding rounds ever at $6.6 billion raised for a valuation of $157 billion—with our boy Masayoshi finally getting his taste of OpenAI by investing $500 million. Second, CA Governor Gruesome Newsom vetoed an AI safety bill, which would have put stricter regulations on the largest class of AI models. Third, an excellent new paper offers a blistering critique of the bigger-is-better paradigm

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01:17:31

373. Press X to Start Revolution (ft. Marijam Did)

This Machine Kills ·

2024/10/07

We chat with Marijam Did, author of the new book Everything to Play For, which bridges radical leftist politics and video games through a real material analysis of video games as an industry, art form, and social space. Marijam lays out the case for why these two communities of radical leftists and gamers—which have largely been distinct and even antagonistic to each other—need to be brought together for the betterment of both sides. Leftists and gamers have a lot to learn from each other. Indeed,

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00:07:34

Patreon Preview – 372. The Sin-Eater of Zero Interest...

This Machine Kills ·

2024/10/03

With the news of interest rates dropping again, we refocus our attention on Masayoshi Son, the man who perhaps most embodies the pathologies of technological capitalism. Thanks to a new biography, we learn fascinating color about Masa’s character which further support what we already to know to be true: he is an ambitious disrupter who is burdened with delusions of grandeur, a degenerate gambler who has turned his addiction to leverage into a personal mythos, and a gifted intermediary who knows how

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01:11:12

371. Optimizing for Planetary Crisis

This Machine Kills ·

2024/10/02

Jumping off a spate of recent reporting, we revisit the deep relations between the tech sector and fossil fuel industry and discuss how companies like Microsoft are turning to oil and gas companies as a solution for AI’s profit problem. How are tech companies going to offset their trillion dollars of capital investment into AI infrastructure? One revenue strategy: selling bespoke AI systems to companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron which make fossil fuel extraction even more efficient, thus

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00:05:23

Patreon Preview – 370. Paranoid Android

This Machine Kills ·

2024/09/27

We dive into a weird but revealing article about the phalanx of private security that Elon Musk has amassed around him, spending a small fortune on ex-operators who plan escape routes for his events, clear rooms before he enters, and assess (perceived) threats to his personal safety. His “mushrooming security apparatus” has caused a feedback loop or paranoia and isolation as he becomes further removed from any social connections to other people. We relate this to a broader zeitgeist of fear in

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01:11:52

369. The Third Most Amazing Race (ft. Gaby Del Valle)

This Machine Kills ·

2024/09/25

We are joined by Gaby Del Valle who has written a great—and distressingly relevant—essay for The Baffler, which reports on the “eugenic foundations of the war on woke.” We dig into the beliefs of innate biological hierarchy and genetic superiority that underpin so much of mainstream right-wing politics. Whether it’s the convergence of Christian nationalist and tech rationalists around issues like declining birth rates and embryo engineering, or its the resurgence of blood libel with JD Vance’s

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00:08:46

Patreon Preview – 368. Building the Most Lethal...

This Machine Kills ·

2024/09/18

Keeping with our recent theme of exploring the relations between the military and tech sector, we jump off a great essay in The Baffler to discuss a crucial part of this complex: university research. Universities – especially, academics in STEM faculties – must be understood as defense contractors who are partners with the military (and adjacent agencies); they advance the military’s goals and are dependent on the military’s cash. You can call them “research grants,” you can say their purpose is to

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01:19:58

367. A Brief History of Apocalypse

This Machine Kills ·

2024/09/16

To mark the occasion of his new best selling airport book, we take a deeper look at Yuval Noah Harari’s impoverished thought and intellectual style via a great review essay by Daniel Immerwahr. We see how Harari’s doomsday scenarios are based on an extreme form of technological determinism + a romanticized humanism-as-critique + a disinterest in material analysis of political economy + an ironically chatbot-esque style of intellectualism. ••• Yuval Noah Harari’s Apocalyptic Vision

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00:07:33

Preview – 366. American Dynamism: Or, Libertarian...

This Machine Kills ·

2024/09/11

We do a deep dive into Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism Strategy and Little Tech Agenda, which together lay out a clear ideology of how tech startups are integral to the American empire. All this venture capital firm asks for is your belief in a16z as a conduit for the spirit of innovation, your trust in America as a vessel for the progressive spirit, and your optimism in a future led by a16z’s vision. Oh yeah, and also billions of dollars to invest in bringing about “the glory of a Second

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01:29:26

365. The Pentagon Primes in Silicon Valley (ft....

This Machine Kills ·

2024/09/05

We chat with friend of the show Michael Richardson—author of the new book Nonhuman Witnessing—about the ongoing, deepening relationships between Silicon Valley and the US military. We check up on new activities from old enemies—Y Combinator, Anduril, Palantir, among others—and get into the changing cultures on both sides as they converge around defense innovation as a solution for Silicon Valley’s problems of needing another endless pool of capital and the Pentagon’s problems of needing to maintain

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00:07:49

Patreon Preview - 364. CopGPT

This Machine Kills ·

2024/09/02

We chat about a heinous crossover as Axon – major police tech firm, maker of tasers and body cameras – creates a new AI product with ChatGPT that automates police reports using audio recordings from body cameras. We get into this whole political economy of cop power and carceral tech. Then we talk about how all the economists are Big Mad because of proposed bans for price gouging of food.••• Police officers are starting to use AI chatbots to write crime reports. Will they hold up in court

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01:25:16

363. Go Directly to Jail. Do Not Pass Go.

This Machine Kills ·

2024/08/29

{Producer’s note: this episode has an electronic buzz in parts due to a dying microphone. I cleaned it up as much as possible, but it couldn’t be totally removed. So it goes!}We go deep on the recent federal antitrust case against Google, which ruled that the company is a monopoly (obviously). We get into the details of the case, before spinning off to talk more broadly about market domination and disaster capitalism, then get back to the potential remedies for addressing Google’s power over

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00:07:12

Patreon Preview - 362. Alex Karp’s Freak Flag Flies

This Machine Kills ·

2024/08/24

We get into a new profile of Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, which is written by Maureen Dowd, one of the NYT’s most credulous opinion writers, and thus the perfect person to coax Karp into being as weird as he wants to be. This piece reveals a lot of core lore about Karp and shines light on a man who is riddled with contradictions and has turned that affliction of the soul into a superpower.••• Alex Karp Has Money and Power. So What Does He Want

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01:00:49

361. The Artists vs. the Machines (ft. Brian Merchant)

This Machine Kills ·

2024/08/20

We’re joined by Brian Merchant to chat about his reporting on the frontlines of labor exploitations in video games development and animation studios where companies are using AI to replace and degrade jobs, fracture and disempower the workforce, and push the quality of artistic works down even further. When executives explicitly say they are going to use a technology to destroy your livelihoods, then you should believe them and act accordingly. The collective response by workers – especially in the

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00:08:26

Patreon Preview – 360. Bubbles and Black Markets

This Machine Kills ·

2024/08/16

We get into the collapse of investor confidence in the AI boom, then turn to the thriving black markets for smuggling vast quantities of AI microchips into China and the geopolitics of technological progress and economic sanctions as AI becomes a site of proxy wars by other means.••• Burst Damage https://www.wheresyoured.at/burst-damage/ ••• With Smugglers and Front Companies, China Is Skirting American A.I. Bans https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/04/technology/china-ai-microchips.html ••• How four

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01:13:11

359. We Are All Cyborgs (ft. Danya Glabau, Laura...

This Machine Kills ·

2024/08/11

We are joined by Danya Glabau and Laura Forlano, authors of Cyborg, a new book that explores how this archetype of sci-fi stories is also a critical theory for understanding the tangle of socio-technical relations that constitute our lives. The cyborg helps us think in terms of embodiment and environments, break down boundaries and barriers, and trace the dialectics of control and freedom that come with being cyborgs. ••• Cyborg | Danya Glabau, Laura Forlano

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00:08:52

Patreon Preview – 358. *Se7en Voice* What’s in the...

This Machine Kills ·

2024/08/07

We first get an update on regulatory arbitrage in the weed vape industry, then discuss how the benchmarks used to rank AI models—and make claims about their "intelligence" relative to humans—are largely low quality, out-of-date, not fit for purpose, or just meaningless and deceptive. Yet they are widely treated by industry as authoritative standards. Then we talk a bit about yet another case of a risk scoring algorithm resulting in devastating consequences.••• Everyone Is Judging AI by These

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01:14:43

357. CrowdStrike ClusterFuck

This Machine Kills ·

2024/08/01

We first talk about how all news stories, even the most world historic ones, feel ephemeral and disposable, and how this is the perverse effect of a (news/social/cultural) media ecosystem that is designed around logics of optimizing for content production and audience attention. Then we get into the CrowdStrike outage and how it reveals (and requires) a more fundamental, systemic critique of IT infrastructure and its techno-politics.••• The Microsoft/CrowdStrike outage shows the danger of

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00:06:11

Patreon Preview – 356. Car Dealerships Are an Affront...

This Machine Kills ·

2024/07/29

We talk about that paragon of capitalism, car dealerships, and the deceptive, manipulative, extractive tactics they have perfected to make the experience as hellish as possible — particularly by turning the dealership’s finance and insurance department into an engine of 100 percent pure parasitic profit. ••• Escape From the Box https://prospect.org/power/2024-07-08-car-dealership-fee-financing-scams Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week

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01:24:27

355. The Rise of Shadow Finance

This Machine Kills ·

2024/07/23

We are a bit ahead with recording, but we had to talk about the Trump assassination attempt and JD Vance being tapped for vice president (for like the first 30 minutes). Then we get into a great essay on how private financial markets — or the shadow finance system that is unregulated, unaccountable, and undemocratic — have become the dominant form of finance in society, thanks in large part to trillions in capital allocated from public pension funds. It’s a classic case of private parasites feeding

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