Tuesday, January 20, 2026

Cory Doctorow - AI Companies Will Fail

We can salvage something from the wreckage

AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. A serious fight against it must strike at its roots

Posted by Corky at 01:52 PM | 6 COMMENTS | permalink

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I am a science-fiction writer, which means that my job is to make up futuristic parables about our current techno-social arrangements to interrogate not just what a gadget does, but who it does it for, and who it does it to.

Comments

"Now I want to talk about how they're selling AI. The growth narrative of AI is that AI will disrupt labor markets. I use "disrupt" here in its most disreputable tech-bro sense.

The promise of AI " the promise AI companies make to investors " is that there will be AI that can do your job, and when your boss fires you and replaces you with AI, he will keep half of your salary for himself and give the other half to the AI company.

That is the $13tn growth story that Morgan Stanley is telling. It's why big investors are giving AI companies hundreds of billions of dollars. And because they are piling in, normies are also getting sucked in, risking their retirement savings and their family's financial security.

Now, if AI could do your job, this would still be a problem. We would have to figure out what to do with all these unemployed people.

But AI can't do your job. It can help you do your job, but that does not mean it is going to save anyone money."

lots more at the link

#1 | Posted by Corky at 2026-01-20 01:58 PM

"Because the AI bubble really is very bad news, it's worth fighting seriously, and a serious fight against AI strikes at its roots:

the material factors fueling the hundreds of billions in wasted capital that are being spent to put us all on the breadline and fill all our walls with hi-tech asbestos.

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of dozens of books, most recently ----------------:

Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.

This essay was adapted from a recent lecture about his forthcoming book, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, which is out in June."

#2 | Posted by Corky at 2026-01-20 02:00 PM

Related ...

Hiring at India's Big Four outsourcers stalls, as AI seemingly makes an impact
www.theregister.com

... India's big four outsourcers " HCL, Infosys, TCS and Wipro " have essentially stopped hiring, perhaps coinciding with their increased use of AI to power their practices.

The four companies have all announced quarterly results in the last ten days and appear to be in decent health. HCL reported $3.8 billion revenue, up 7.4 percent year over year. Infosys pulled in $5.1 billion, up 1.7 percent year over year. TCS revenue of $7.5 billion represented a three percent increase. Wipro's $2.6 billion revenue represented a 5.5 percent year over year improvement.

India's top tech companies often hire more than 10,000 people a quarter, a rate of recruitment that more-than offsets attrition and sees their headcounts rise substantially. Wipro increased its payroll by 6,500 people last quarter and Infosys hired 5,000 more -- muted growth by their standards -- while TCS and HCL went backward by 11,000 and 261 people respectively.

Over the last year, the four companies added just 3,910 staff, an unusually slow rate of hiring.

Perhaps coincidentally, all four companies told investors they're using more AI to deliver services for clients, either by adopting the technology to streamline their own work or by adding it to the tools they deliver to customers. I ...



#3 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-01-20 02:58 PM

AI is an oversold tool. Nothing more.

I'm currently on the job market looking for a new position and I've been using AI to help with resume polishing/optimization, cover letter drafting ect.

It still requires significant work to get to a usable document once AI has spit out its version. Most of the time, both documents are littered with phrases/buzzwords that flag it as AI, so you have to sort those out. Then you have to tone down the claims and descriptions it make in your documents because it ALWAYS oversells DRAMATICALLY. Like claiming experience and accomplishments mentioned nowhere in the original document.

About the only thing it's good for is working in every key term possible to pass ATS screening and assessing whether or not you're a good match for a given job listing. That's it. And even the assessment part is a bit off because of the above mentioned issues.

I can only imagine the issues with other more complex processes.

#4 | Posted by jpw at 2026-01-20 03:43 PM

#4

Good points; I ran an office of a dozen headhunters, er, Exec Search Consultants in the Silicon Valley in the 80's. It was a wild time, and we worked with what are now a lot of famous names.

But your post led me to ask about this: AI in Executive Search.

Here's the first articles I found:

trueplatform.com

www.forbes.com

Good luck with your search!

#5 | Posted by Corky at 2026-01-20 04:06 PM

@#4 ... AI is an oversold tool. Nothing more. ...

Gartner Hype Cycle
https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hype-cycle

...
When new technologies make bold promises, how do you discern the hype from what's commercially viable? And when will such claims pay off, if at all? ...

How do Hype Cycles work?

Each Hype Cycle drills down into the five key phases of a technology's life cycle.

- - - Innovation Trigger: A potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. Early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. Often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven.

- - - Peak of Inflated Expectations: Early publicity produces a number of success stories " often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.

- - - Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.

- - - Slope of Enlightenment: More instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallize and become more widely understood. Second- and third-generation products appear from technology providers. More enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious.

- - - Plateau of Productivity: Mainstream adoption starts to take off. Criteria for assessing provider viability are more clearly defined. The technology's broad market applicability and relevance are clearly paying off.
...


#6 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-01-20 04:21 PM

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