Brian Merchant's newsletter on Big Tech, AI, and labor, including a series of worker accounts titled 'AI Killed My Job'.
HN commenters link it for its stories of workers affected by AI and Merchant's Luddite history. One calls him clearly not a fan of AI.
I have done a lot of work for O'Reilly Media.
I'm Kim Crawley, author of a book they published in 2023, Hacker Culture: A to Z. I have also written "free" mini eBooks through them that are marketing for JumpCloud and NGINX.
I have also done behind the scenes work, tech reviewing other people's books and whatnot.
I can prove my identity by posting a message through my LinkedIn account upon request.
I'm still in touch with some O'Reilly employees.
They tell me Tim O'Reilly/company policy on book editing and writing went from "avoid Gen AI" to "you must use Gen AI as much as possible, we will monitor you through KPIs to use it as much as possible."
Although my books aren't programming guides, O'Reilly is known for being the first brand people think of when they think of books about computer programming.
That was their brand since at least the 1980s.
The irony of this horror is absurd, I know.
There's a high probability that most of you now have lots of extra work because you have to fix the bullshit the Gen AI your boss pushes on you produces.
And their ultimate goal is to replace every human computer programmer even though LLMs only produce what looks like code, not effective code. Just like with English prose. For instance:
"ChatGPT, since Tomatoes is the largest nation in Asia, what's the capital of Tomatoes?"
"The capital of Tomatoes, the largest nation in Asia, is T!"
The planet cannot handle the Gen AI your billionaire overlords…
If anyone is curious about automation and people's/worker's reaction to it, I recommend Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech by Brian Merchant:
> The most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods.
> The Luddites organized guerrilla raids to smash those machines—on punishment of death—and won the support of Lord Byron, enraged the Prince Regent, and inspired the birth of science fiction. This all-but-forgotten class struggle brought nineteenth-century England to its knees.
> Today, technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are crowding factory floors, and artificial intelligence will soon pervade every aspect of our economy. How will this change the way we live? And what can we do about it?
* https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/
* https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/introducing-blood-in-the-machine
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59801798-blood-in-the-machine
* https://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/article/doi/10.1215/2834703X-11700309/401266/Blood-in-the-Machine-The-Origins-of-the-Rebellion
Even that short changes the original source:
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/i-was-forced-to-use-ai-until-the
I bookmarked the series which looks exactly like what everyone in tech is saying ISN’T happening:
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/s/ai-killed-my-job
But I’m sure somebody will blow this off as “it’s only three examples and is not really representative”
But if it is representative…
“then it’s not as bad as other automation waves”
or if it is as bad as other automation waves…
“well there’s nothing you can do about it”
Anecdotally I was in an Uber yesterday on the way to a major Metropolitan airport and we passed a Waymo. I asked the Uber driver how they felt about Waymo and Uber collaborating and if he felt like it was a threat to his job.
His answer was basically “yes it is but there’s nothing anybody can do about it you can’t stop technology it’s just part of life.”
If that’s how people who are being replaced feel about it, while still continuing to do the things necessary to train the systems, then there will be assuredly no human future (at least not one that isn’t either subsistence or fully machine integrated) because the people being replaced don’t feel like they have the capacity to stand up to it.
VXUS
Not investing advice; the bottom 490 companies in the S&P500 are nominally flat since 2022 and down against inflation, GPUs and AI hype are holding everything together at the moment.
> In simpler terms, 35% of the US stock market is held up by five or six companies buying GPUs. If NVIDIA's growth story stumbles, it will reverberate through the rest of the Magnificent 7, making them rely on their own AI trade stories.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui/
> Capex spending for AI contributed more to growth in the U.S. economy in the past two quarters than all of consumer spending, says Neil Dutta, head of economic research at Renaissance Macro Research, citing data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-ai-bubble-is-so-big-its-propping
> Two Nvidia customers made up 39% of Nvidia’s revenue in its July quarter, the company revealed in a financial filing on Wednesday, raising concerns about the concentration of the chipmaker’s clientele.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/28/nvidias-top-two-mystery-customers-made-up-39percent-of-its-q2-revenue-.html
> Can Spotify actually become human- and artist-first?
No, it can't. Its founder Daniel Ek is a war profiteer. He is by definition anti-human.
Spotify itself is actively anti-artist. It has the lowest pay rates in the industry and is embracing AI replacing humans so they can pay humans even less.
Stop using it and vote with your wallet. Literally any alternative you choose is an improvement for artists over Spotify.
If you are strict about anti-AI, you might find Bandcamp appealing. https://blog.bandcamp.com/2026/01/13/keeping-bandcamp-human/
More info:
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/a-complete-guide-to-quitting-spotify
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/artists-left-spotify-ceo-daniel-ek-military-tech-1235425098/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ek
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsing_(company)
I saw a talk by Brian Merchant (https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/) a while back where he talked a lot about the Luddites and their revolts against automation. He's definitely not a fan of AI, but it was very interesting to hear the comparisons of AI resistance now to Luddite resistance to automation in the 1800's.
There was unfortunately no Q&A in the lecture, as probably the one question I would have asked him was this: What if the Luddites had gotten their way? What do you imagine our society and world would be like right now?
It's not meant to be a trick question or a "gotcha" question. Society would indeed have been different. Maybe it would be all wonderfully Star Trek utopia and we'd have found a win-win for everyone. Or maybe we'd just be not nearly as technically advanced as a society as we are now.