Blood in the Machine: The Podcast
A podcast about Silicon Valley, AI, and the future of work. Hosted by Brian Merchant, it explores the intersection of technology and labor, examining how automation and artificial intelligence are reshaping industries and jobs.
Episodes
Charting the rise of tech fascism
Going back decades, there’s been a faction in Silicon Valley whose chief interest was not coding, consumer technology or even business, but power. In some ways, the story of the last ten years of the tech industry has been the story of that faction, perhaps best embodied by Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, but also represented by figures like Marc Andreessen and figures like Alex Karp, Palmer Luckey, an
The State of the AI Bubble with Ed Zitron
There are fresh signs that the AI bubble is wobbling. Again.In recent weeks, a much-vaunted AI-focused hedge fund, Situational Awareness, run by Valley wunderkind Leopold Aschenbrenner lost $35 billion; nearly its entire fund. South Korea saw its largest-ever stock market collapse as investors pulled bets on AI chips and tech stocks. The circularity of the AI economy, with hyperscalers investing i
What is an 'Elon Musk'?
Elon Musk is not the richest man in the world merely because he’s good at selling cars or rockets at a profitable margin. That might have sufficed for richest men in the world of decades past. But Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, however briefly, for a lot of reasons, and being good at moving a particular product is not chief among them. Musk sells a vision. Musk harnesses the state to
Xbox workers speak out about layoffs, AI, and how big tech brought a crisis to gaming
On July 6th, Microsoft announced that it was laying off 4,800 workers, largely from its Xbox gaming division. It’s now sadly routine in the tech industry; thousands of jobs gone in an instant, with little more than a corporate memo and some platitudes about AI. To better understand what actually happens behind the scenes in a big tech layoff event, and to understand the particular crisis faced by
The Luddites take New York
The year has been marked by the rise of open, widespread, and increasingly spirited backlash to AI, data centers, and big tech. As such, the stage was well set for the Summer of Ludd, a series of protests, performances, talks, and meetups in New York City organized around the idea that we need to get people into the streets and break Silicon Valley’s grip over our lives. There were mock trials of
How and why to de-Google your life
While Google seems dead set on making their users hate their product, the courts in Europe are taking issue with their anti-competitive business practices. Meanwhile, the Summer of Ludd kicks off in New York and a new dating survey finds: It’s sexy to be a luddite. Plus, my good friend and fellow tech journalist Paris Marx joins us to discuss the final boss of Google's enshittification: Search goi
The AI industry is pouring hundreds of millions into US elections
The tech lobby spent $27 million on a single Congressional election in New York. OpenAI-backed Leading the Future spent $8 million on ads attacking Alex Bores, who vowed to rein in AI, in an effort to fire a warning shot—did it work? What does this mean for democracy? Meanwhile, a Michigan town takes on a nuclear AI data center, and a bipartisan effort to legislate against AI theft of artist’s wor
How to dis-enshittify the world, with Cory Doctorow
Does Cory Doctorow even need an introduction at this point? If you spend any amount of time at all online, then you’ve encountered his work, his ideas, his words. But the ultra-prolific science fiction writer, digital rights activist, and coiner of the “Enshittification” verbiage that’s become universal shorthand for the degradation of the internet (and, to an extent, everything else), has been es
Understanding the tech oligarchy and its gilded rage with Jacob Silverman
Happy Halloween all. I got into the spirit by catching up with the horror flicks I’d been sleeping on (28 Years Later was surprisingly good) and, more importantly, chatting with the great tech journalist Jacob Silverman, author of GILDED RAGE: ELON MUSK AND THE RADICALIZATION OF SILICON VALLEY, a book about some very scary people who hold immense sway over our politics and our lives. Before we get
Dismantling the Empire of AI with Karen Hao
Years before OpenAI became a household name, Karen Hao was one of the very first journalists to gain access to the company. What she saw when she did unsettled her. Despite a name that signaled transparency, executives were elusive, the culture secretive. Despite publicly heralding a mission to build AGI, or artificial general intelligence, company leadership couldn’t really say what that meant, o
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