The Plot Against Finance - Boston Review
Democracy depends on the free exchange of ideas. Help sustain it with a tax-deductible donation today. Image: Getty Images Any public agenda will have to take on Wall Street. Edward Ongweso Jr. Morozov’s paean to “ecological reason” is a breath of fresh air, demonstrating how the Cold War perverted not only AI development but our capacity to imagine alternatives—technological forms untethered to markets and the military. He lays special emphasis on the way AI today captures the ethos of neoliberalism; I’d like to expand on the way financialization helps it do so. The funds being funneled into the generative AI boom reflect a particular array of interests and externalities, and behind it all looms a long-standing asset bubble underwriting the expansion of our global computational infrastructure. In 2023 venture capitalists invested billions in startups chasing AI but were outspent two to one by just three tech firms: Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon. If this year is any indicator, that t
Explore this link on the map →