174
AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage | Cory Doctorow
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
174 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
79298 readers
4202 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is a good read even if you're not a fan of doctorow yet.
Like another commenter said, his thoughts about centaurs and reverse centaurs are cool (basically whether you use technology or technology uses you).
Also his thoughts about copyright and if it would be good to reinforce it are interesting - he says that artists won't be paid well if their art can't be stolen for AI training, their contracts will be adjusted and that's it. He says what gives bargaining power is the fact that the output of LLMs can't be copyrighted, which means that human artists have to be in the loop of making tomorrows media.
That may be the status quo right now, but I expect tech and media companies will fight tooth and nail to gain copyright protections over the slop they generate. A few ~~bribes~~ donations to the right politicians and you can get legislation that grants whatever rights you want.
Assuming it actually becomes valuable/profitable at some point.
I agree with him in general about AI but hot goddamn the man gives serious self-described philosopher/cult leader/grifter vibes out the wazoo.
How's that?
AI bros do venerate science-fiction writers an unhealthy amount. Fictional fearmongering like "AI2027" is taken as fact, an actual AI doomsday cult leader has no credentials except publishing fantasy fiction, people like Neal Stephenson are treated almost as prophets etc... So if that's the bit of the article you take issue with, I don't think it's a problem
I agree somewhat, but I think it's just that he's US-american, they can be like that
Doctorow is Canadian-British.