Jathan Sadowski

Thrilled to announce the official publication of my new book — The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism Grab my book to go beyond the vaporous hype and get the real material analysis of technological capitalism that we all need! www.ucpress.edu/books/the-me...

Just found out that my term Habsburg AI in the wikipedia page for "machine learning" – the footnote goes to an article that is an interview with me about the term and the risks of synthetic data and model collapse. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine...

Palmer Luckey is such a try hard comic book villain. Everything about him, every choice he makes, is like if the "muahaha" evil laugh became a real boy. www.ft.com/content/8a55...

In the new TMK Premium, we discuss and riff on the People’s AI Assembly, organized by AI Now Institute and More Perfect Union. teaser: soundcloud.com/thismachinek... full episode:

Hell yeah that’s what I’m talking about.

Best way to read @jathansadowski.com is chucking a sickie at your tech job and day drinking on a Carlton rooftop

In the new TMK, I chat with @katekaye.bsky.social all about the history and future of trying to measure trust by turning it into quantified, objective feature of the world, rather than a dynamic, affective relationship between people. full episode: www.patreon.com/thismachinek...

The first copies of Algorithmic Realism: Data Science Practices to Promote Social Justice have arrived! It's pretty surreal to hold a physical copy after years of staring at Word docs and PDFs. The book comes out next week, so get your preorders in now! mitpress.mit.edu/978026205570...

In the new TMK, we chat about "super intelligence," the factions of tech policy advice in Trump's admin, then the many ways that OpenAI and Anthropic are behaving like rogue agents who are irresponsible and incompetent to a degree that should be unbelievable. Full episode:

Tressie really nails deep truths here about the agentic subjectivity that these companies and engineers assume people either already have or will readily reorient their lives around – assuming again they even could do so, which speaks to the view that life is just a spreadsheet of structured tasks.

Most people’s work lives are not that structured. And almost no normal person’s personal life can be that structured. The “gee whiz” of it all cant manufacture the market it needs.

Technology enthusiasts severely overestimate the average person’s desire or willingness or capacity to build and use AI agents. I understand some work roles that could mandate or encourage it but that is no way a tech revolution. Agents are best for structured, clearly delineated tasks.

In practice, AI literacy doesn’t start with building the tool for your personal use. It starts with understanding yourself as a collection of tasks who should subcontract those out to a machine. Almost no regular person’s life currently exists as such.

It’s REAL??!!

“Agents like Muse are trying to convince us they’re just a cute little guy who lives in your pocket, and definitely not an always-open portal into the servers of a major surveillance company,” says @jathansadowski.com. My weekend report for @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/meta-m...

What does the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident reveal about AI discourse? The hosts of this episode argue that public debate treats AI less as a set of explainable machine-learning systems than as a mystified force with opaque intentions. With @jathansadowski.com & @edwardongwesojr.com buff.ly/AueQIHb

In the new TMK Premium, we learn all about how leftists are against any new regulations for AI. It’s the unbelievable return of horseshoe theory as we discuss the curious new discourse cycle being promoted by prominent pundits. Teaser: soundcloud.com/thismachinek... Full episode:

Proud to live in a Luddite Nation — now if only our institutions and leaders trusted people’s concerns and accepted their skepticism as legitimate, rather than working overtime for tech companies to make us trust, accept, and use their AI systems. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...

In the new TMK, we jump off from the OpenAI - Hugging Face hack to discuss the misleading, cynical, and hysterical ways we talk about AI and the stranglehold that existential risk has on our framings and discourses. full episode: soundcloud.com/thismachinek...

In the new TMK Premium, we get into two stories about the tech sector and speculative real estate booms. First, how Netflix promises to turn the Jersey Shore into “Hollywood East”. Second, how the data centre bonanza is stretching Wall Street beyond its limits. www.patreon.com/thismachinek...

On the “weaknesses of policy frameworks that rely on companies to act responsibly and in good faith.” www.wired.com/story/i-dema...

In the new TMK, we chat with @js-tan.bsky.social and Clarissa Redwine, both veteran tech labor organizers, about their new book that chronicles the tech worker movement, while also offering invaluable perspective and advice on building worker power in tech. free episode:

New on The Dig: Insuring Catastrophe with @astra.bsky.social, @dwallacewells.bsky.social, Madison Condon, and Moira Birss Ecological instability has arrived. Storms, floods and fires have become our new normal. Insurance companies are adapting. pod.fo/e/5adbe8

To kick off our book tour, we're bringing together labor leaders + tech critics to pack the jury in the trial of a tech oligarch. First up is Bezos, in NYC 9/10. This event will be a boisterous, cathartic celebration of working class solidarity and power! RSVP: www.eventbrite.com/e/book-event...

In the new TMK Premium, we take a closer look at the new all-of-government strategy for *AI in Australia’s Interests.* Australia has plotted out a bold, progressive vision where AI enthusiasm is mandatory and the inability to say no is actually empowering. full episode:

You can just ban socially toxic technologies! They were socially banned like twelve years ago with Google Glasses, we can do it again in more formal ways with this latest attempt to push the Pervert's Delight™ onto society. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...

I have just started reading this! The Left Book Club version:

In the new TMK, we take a deep dive into New York’s police-surveillance infrastructure, a sprawling leviathan that Mayor Zohran Mamdani was outspoken against during his campaign, but has now inherited and is even warming up to as his administration settles into power. Fee episode:

My husband Drew wrote this at breakneck speed while moving cross-country and caring for an 8 month old, bc he felt it was necessary, ethically and politically, to correct the record. If you read Tyler Austin Harper's piece, I hope you'll read this.

Yessss! It’s out! An essay I wrote using Zachtronics/ @matthewseiji.com’s Eliza, @jathansadowski.com’s The Mechanic and the Luddite, and Calvin Kasulke’s Several People are Typing to examine… well, the present moment. Games and books in conversation with one another ✌🏻

My book AGAINST TECH OLIGARCHY, out Sept 15, is available for pre-order at againsttecholigarchy.com. It chronicles the rise of tech workers' activism, how they courageously came together to challenge the industry's most powerful bosses, and how their movement changed Silicon Valley forever. 1/

Last week's This Machine Kills episode is all about business execs in the grip of AI mania and how their employees and business partners are dealing with it. An infuriating listen (but also surprisingly reassuring). podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t... @jathansadowski.com

🔇 🔇 🔇 My book, Deep Unlearning, is now available for preorders! I don't know how people write so many books because this one took a lot out of me. It turns out, I had a lot to say 😂, with editors cutting out 50k of my words 🫣 ✴️ You can now preorder it at www.simonandschuster.com/books/Deep-U....

In the new TMK Premium, we breakdown new reporting which shows the sheer scale of fossil-fuelled data center development in the United States. We’re talking more than 120 GIGAWATTS of new gas-burning power plants coming online just to electrify data centers. full episode:

I'm giving a short talk – Making Markets for Climate Science – as part of this symposium on August 20th at the Royal Society of Victoria in Melbourne. I'll be talking about the political economy of climate risk analytics. Registration is free and recommended: events.humanitix.com/the-power-of...

Oh I love a good AI/new digital tech reading list! TY! Our Summer Reading List for Minneapolis therebuild.ghost.io/a-summer-rea... is more broad but has a tech section. I'm a fan of The Mechanic and the Luddite by @jathansadowski.com

In the new TMK Premium – from the frontlines of AI mania, we discuss the bizarre pathology that has seemingly possessed every manager in every institution in every sector. The maniacs are in charge, the heretics are shot, nobody is safe. full free episode: www.patreon.com/thismachinek...

Very happy to see my new preprint included in @the-syllabus.bsky.social's Best of Technology for this week papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

@bcmerchant.bsky.social probably wrote the most important book to repopularize the and recontextualize the Luddite movement. @jathansadowski.com takes it further with frameworks and analysis on the systems that produced the world we live in: tech and capital, and actions on how we can dismantle them

Check out my new article, forthcoming in Critical AI, preprint available here papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I'm giving a short talk – Making Markets for Climate Risk Knowledge – as part of this symposium on August 20th at the Royal Society of Victoria in Melbourne.

In the new TMK Premium, we discuss a very circular ~$600 billion deal between Nvidia, OpenAI, and Softbank for a 10-gigawatt, natural gas powered, data center complex. Then we revisit the hysteria about organized retail theft that caused every CVS to turn into the Magneto prison.

Check out my new article, forthcoming in Critical AI, preprint available here papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....