With billions pouring into AI based on its promises, Jon is joined by Cory Doctorow, author of “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI,” to separate the hype from reality. Together, they examine how the AI industry relies on inflated expectations, question what AI can genuinely do and whether that even matters when selling a product, and explore how the technology is supercharging problems already embedded in our society, including surveillance, labor exploitation, and corporate consolidation. Plus, Jon answers listeners’ questions about 107 days until the midterms, the Fox Administration, Punch vs. Jimothy.
00:00 – Introduction & The AI Promise
03:19 – Cory Doctorow Joins
04:32 – Defining “Enshittification” & Platform Decay
17:01– The “Reverse Centaur” & Workforce Automation
26:24 – Space Colonization Myths & Billionaire Escapism
40:06 – Corporate Overreliance on AI & The Real-World Backlash
56:30 – Market Concentration, Regulation & Accountable Systems
1:14:46 – Solutions, Resistance & Reclaiming the Tech Ecosystem
1:19:21 – Breaking Down the Discussion
1:22:41 – Audience Questions
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On Mondays, Jon Stewart hosts The Daily Show, but on Thursdays he hosts The Weekly Show — A podcast featuring in- depth conversations with special guests that explores the biggest threats to our democracy. Also hear from producers and friends of the show who discuss the latest headlines, what’s on their minds, and more!
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Fox News: The US Department of Propaganda
I just googled Cory's wife (Alice Taylor) and her position at bbc (as cory mentioned she works at bbc)…. Her title at bbc is Ai related:
Head of AI Creative Lab, BBC Studios Productions
Lol. How ironic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Taylor_(businesswoman)
Sickening
Our democracy ( supremacy, senate check on house) will be taken by the tech fascists if we can't stop them. Gil Duran has a book called the nerd Reich 🤓 Chilling. We have to defeat the Uniparty, DSA. Secular talk Kyle kulinski YouTube Dr Richard wolff, lecture on workers coop YouTube BBC untold story of reconstruction YouTube 😢Gomez de azurara, 14th century Portugal. Chattel slavery justified. Republicans were essentially the lefty's Google party shift. Legal AF YouTube Free Palestine 🇵🇸 🙌
Never surrender in advance
Take a drink every time Cory says, "right?" or "like". Call an ambulance first, like, right? 3 minutes was all I could stand of this fk.
Jon I love your work! You’ve always stood in the truth and have come with the truth tellers. Your work speaks for itself. I cannot stand the divisiveness that always been highlighted in our country and I’m happy my parents who passed in their upper 90’s weren’t able to see the #enshitification we’re experiencing.
Your podcasts continue to inform me!✊🏽💪🏽👏🏽👍🏽💯
Thank you for this.
In June 1992, a Labor Party government was elected in Israel under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin.
The key negotiation milestones in this period were the 1993 Declaration of Principles, the 4 May 1994 Gaza-Jericho Agreement, and Oslo II in September 1995.
Hamas' response was:
6 April 1994 — Afula bus bombing: 8 — people ’.
13 April 1994 — Hadera bus station bombing: 5 —-people.
17 July 1994 — Tel Aviv (Dizengoff Street) bus bombing: 22 —people-’.
21 August 1995 — Jerusalem bus bombing: 5 —-people.
24 July 1995 — Ramat Gan bus bombing: 6 —- people’’.
After every terrorist attack, Netanyahu came to the scene to take pictures and blame the government.
On November 4, 1995, Rabin was assassinated by a Jew named Yigal Amir at the end of a rally in Tel Aviv titled "Yes to Peace, No to Violence.”
The ethos of Palestinian nationalism has never been the aspiration for the establishment of a Palestinian state; it has been and remains the prevention and subsequent cessation of the existence of a Jewish state.
1:07:20 so what is the difference, or the link, between the nervous CEOs of the 90s and the callous ones today? Back then, they didn’t want young workforce using a tool they couldn’t control (web), and now they don’t want the young workforce using the last thing they can’t control, their own brains?? (instead of AI) Cory D always thinks too fast to follow up on these points, I wish he would slow down and explain more of his comparisons, as the ones I understand are really good!
Not even one minute in and I had to pause…
😱
At what point does the cumulative effects of the snake eating it’s own tail crash the system?
What's the split between API token sales and Subscriptions on revenue share I wonder? I'd have assumed API was higher but I don't actually know.
Cory Doctorow fucking rules, I love his sci-fi novels too – Walkaway in particular was amazing
Should've been a doctor with a last name like that
12:23 this killed me
I think I just became a Cory Doctorow fan. Thanks, The Weekly Show, for amplifying great peoples' voices.
"We're losing money on every token, but we'll make up for it in volume!"
— Every frontier AI lab for years now
42:37 yeah we can see the austerity socialists are doing – and people turning towards fascists. the next election will be a bloodbath.
Jon needs to have Ed Zitron on.
I work in art and animation and one of the hardest things about this era is not being able to go even a day without seeing some AI generated reminder that they scraped the entirety of art, our photos, videos, movies, music, personal data, etc to replace us using our own stolen work to power their software. And I see so little discussion about it–as much as I appreciated this discussion, hardly a mention of the impact on creative work they've outright stolen, the copyright laws that SHOULD be there to protect us doing nothing.
I know to many folks there's bigger things going on in the world but it's so damn depressing to imagine a future where artists have had their work stolen to power AI that replaces them and for the future of all art to be f***ing prompted.
(That's of course completely setting aside the horrors that await us with photos and videos I discernable from reality used for mass disinformation and manipulating the public, which is already happening and only in its infancy I'm afraid to say.)
Sadly I just don't have it in me to take an optimistic look and expect it all to collapse in on itself as I watch everything I've dedicated my life to violated before my eyes each and every day.
Enjoy your spiel however I'm not merican you dudes maybe correctly hoped arranged person was different from gerri JoeB
John, if you're still considering a song about Jimothy, may I suggest borrowing from Rupert Holmes song, Timothy, popularized by The Buoys back in 1971. That should also help solve any rhyming problems you might actually have, if indeed you do.
One of the things that occurs to me about the shitty train idea, is just "How do you actually function in a road where like 4 miles is just this one trucking company's trucks in a line?"
That's just not how the road systems work. I guess it kind of works for the many many miles between places, but how do you function when 4 miles of traffic gets into LA and just sits there?
the problem is NO ONE HAS TIME TO GET INVOLVED IN THESE CIVIL ACTIVIST/WATEVER U WANNA CALL IT GROUPS. WE GOT JOBS AND BILLS TO PAY.
“Vast panoply of chuds” was absolutely genius!
Lily Tomlin’s character was on Laugh In not SNL..
But this was a great analogy you made.
Big shout out to The Jungle by upton sinclair- the book that changed America in 20C
I think its good decision however i beginning to think the effects in USA of AI will be deceminated accross the world. The lack of strong labour laws and or regulation in USA directly affects everybody else.I enjoyed this discussion. C
Jimmothy question… it is not religions but cults that get started that way
Word guessing program is best layman description of LLM i ever heard…. Stealing it
no economies of scale – 50 years from now we will just be starting able to use GAI to advantage – balloons- airships – airplanes – three clocks of technology finance, capability, adaption
As a Mainer growing up in the 80s/90s, were Tim Sample's "You can't get there from here!" jokes just ripped off from Newfoundland? 🙂
It's legal to gamble on anything now, except onions. Futures trading on onions is completely off limits.
Great guest. Great show. Thanks, Jon
He's too eager to glibly dismiss the possibility that AI/LLMs could be dangerous, because he only frames it as "we taught it too many words, oh how awful", and ignores the fact that people are giving these models agency to actually do things in the real world. AI doesn't have to secretly become an evil genius in order for overly trusting humans to give it access to systems and equipment that can be put to dangerous use, even inadvertently. The plausible danger is not that AI will wake up one day having become evil and super smart, it's that we have too little instinct to deploy it carefully, and there are a lot of idiots out there.
AHH always good to hear someone speak up no gods no mayors podcast.
That s an easy thumbs up.
AI is the Crypto of the internet.
Yes, you need to get Ed Zitron on, if you haven't contacted him already.
Quite good looking support Podcasters i see
So, "unit economics" is basically your profit function's partial derivative wrt amount of customers. got it.