How Anthropic used AI ethics slop to play the pope and eclipse OpenAI
By marketing itself as the 'safe' AI company, Anthropic has pulled in a $65 billion payday and leapfrogged OpenAI to become the most valuable AI startup.
TechCulture
Blood in the Machine.
Brian Merchant on big tech, labor, and the history of automation.
Recent essays
30 of 43They just formed the biggest tech worker union in the US. They plan to rein in AI and curb layoffs
"Who AI benefits and who it immiserates often is based on who gets to decide how it’s used. We know how tech is used on the day to day. We should be at the table as well."
AI as the new avatar of American capitalism
Why "AI populism" is just "populism"
The AI-inflected crisis artists are facing, in 4 charts
An alarming new study reveals the dire impact AI is having on artists' livelihoods. It does offer some hope, too.
The data center rebellion is only the beginning
And it's precisely what democratic governance of AI looks like.
Palantir is overplaying its hand. Plus: Tim Cooks's real legacy
The defense tech giant's controversial manifesto actually reveals it's more vulnerable than its bravado lets on. Plus, how departing Apple CEO Tim Cook will really be remembered.
Monterey Park becomes the first city in California to ban "all data centers within city limits"
Residents of the small enclave east of LA not only killed their city's proposed 250,000 square foot data center, they pushed city council to ban them altogether
A brief history of techno-negativity
From the techne pessimists of Ancient Greece to the computer firebombers of the Information Age, here's a look at the long—and fruitful—legacy of refusing the machine.
BLOOD IN THE MACHINE is looking for a podcast producer
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Why the AI backlash has turned violent
And why it's probably only going to get worse from here.
AI firms and their US military ties, "a whole civilization will die tonight" edition
Plus, Anthropic's new AI model that's 'too dangerous to release,' thoughts on the New Yorker's Sam Altman investigation, and more.
It's open season for refusing AI
There's been a wave of successful efforts to ban, reject and shut down AI.
AI's aesthetics of failure
On the demise of Sora and our enduring revulsion to AI slop
The first basic income for workers impacted by AI has begun sending out $1,000 monthly payments
The AI Dividend is distributing $1,000 a month for a year, no strings attached, to eligible workers.
Conan O'Brien, tech critic
The Oscars host mined Hollywood's unease with Silicon Valley. Plus, BuzzFeed nears bankruptcy after its pivot to AI, China's exploding gig economy, and a playwright calls Sam Altman a Nazi.
"If AI is writing the work and AI is reading the work, do we even need to be there at all?" Educators reveal a growing crisis on campus and off
AI Killed My Job: Educators.
Warning Signs
What drives the men who make--and abuse--AI?
The most aggressively anti-AI film of the ChatGPT era
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die takes a big swing at AI. Does it connect?
Actually, the left is winning the AI debate
But it does need to get organized.
Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras
Anger over ICE connections and privacy violations is fueling the sabotage. PLUS: 10,000 drivers call on Uber to repay stolen wages, a man is arrested at a public hearing about a data center and more.
Five takeaways from an unhinged AI discourse
What's behind the feverish AI discourse? Who thinks "AI is fake"? Is "the left" wrong to dismiss AI? Is that even what's happening? What's really going on with AI in 2026.
Google is stifling anti-ICE speech in the workplace as 1,200 employees call on the company to cut ties
The search giant has made it harder and riskier to protest its policies. Workers are still fighting back. Plus: A community takes down a data center, QuitGPT, and the 5 worst Super Bowl AI ads.
How Jeff Bezos and Amazon became instruments of authoritarianism
And how to stop them
On the smokescreen of AGI, and fighting for workers in the age of Trump and the tech oligarchy
Plus, protestors demand Amazon ditch its ICE contracts on the national day of protest.
The lines have been drawn
Silicon Valley must decide which side it's on
What Trump really wants with AI
Trump's AI agenda is often described as a push for deregulation; an effort to cut red tape so AI companies can innovate. In truth, it's a big government project with designs toward domination.
Abolish the senses
How the post-truth politics of Donald Trump and Elon Musk engineered the brutal, unpopular ICE occupation -- and what the resistance is actually about.
Busy
One bleak possible future for life after the AI bubble bursts
The best books, films and TV about AI + tech in 2025
The Great Blood in the Machine Guide to All Media
There has to be a way
On the future of art and labor in the age of American AI and authoritarianism.