#1797 AI Spent $540 Billion to Make You Lonelier: Betting Against Jobs, Art, and Community

Air Date: 6–3-2026

Today we examine the AI industry's economic house of cards, the ideology Silicon Valley uses to sell a broken product, and the very real human costs being paid by workers, the lonely, and communities bulldozed for data centers nobody asked for.

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TOP TAKES

KP 1: The AI Backlash Just Got VERY Public - House of El - AI - Air Date 5-24-26

KP 2: The AI Industry Is Losing - Better Offline - Air Date 5-26-26

KP 3: The Aesthetic Pipeline to Techno-Fascism - Alice Cappelle - Air Date 5-27-26

KP 4: Joe Rogan Accidentally Exposed AI in Four Words - Mo Bitar - Air Date 5-22-26

KP 5: How AI Companions Are Destroying Human Intimacy | Angela Ivy Leong | TEDxWest Vancouver - TEDx Talks - Air Date 1-14-26

KP 6: Astra Taylor on AI Data Center Resistance & Fighting "Billionaire Big Tech Agenda"- Democracy Now! - Air Date 5-13-26


(00:51:20) NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

AI Is a Drug and We're All Self-Medicating

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DEEPER DIVES

(01:09:29) SECTION A: THE BUBBLE ECONOMICS

A1: Will SpaceX and OpenAI Starve the Market? - UNFTR Media - Air Date 5-26-26

A2: Karen Hao: AI Creating a DESPERATE BASE OF WORKERS with No Full-time Employment - Channel 4 News - Air Date 5-22-26

A3: AI and Cancer: Why Superintelligence Won’t Get Us to a Cure - Your Undivided Attention - Air Date 4-30-26


(01:37:24) SECTION B: IDEOLOGY OF THE TECH ELITE

B1: The Left Doesn’t Hate Technology with Gita Jackson - Tech Won't Save Us - Air Date 3-12-26

B2: Why We Should Care About the Pope’s AI Crusade - The Tech Report - Air Date 5-26-26

B3: The UK Government’s AI Obsession Is a Big Risk with Will Dunn - Tech Won't Save Us - Air Date 5-14-26

B4: Maybe It's a Bad Idea To Put Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman In Charge of AI - Some More News - Air Date 5-23-26

B5: Have We Trained AI to Lie to Itself — And to Us? - Your Undivided Attention - Air Date 4-16-26


(02:21:29) SECTION C: THE HUMAN COST

C1: Why AI Friends Will Never Work - The Upgrade with Makai Allbert - Air Date 5-25-26

C2: Richard Dawkins Fell for a Chatbot - Steve Shives - Air Date 5-4-26

C3: She Spent 12 Years Fighting Amazon. Now She Wants to Cut the Power to AI. - For Humanity: An AI Risk Podcast - Air Date 5-2-26

C4: There Is No Such Thing as AI Art ♥️ - Matt Bernstein - Air Date 5-22-26


(02:50:10) SECTION D: RESISTANCE & HOW TO FIGHT BACK

D1: How to Talk About AI Risk Without Scaring People Away (With Philip Trippenbach) | For Humanity 82 - For Humanity: An AI Risk Podcast - Air Date 3-28-26

D2: Why AI Doom Content Is Everywhere- Taylor Lorenz - Air Date 5-27-26

D3: How to Talk About AI Risk Without Scaring People Away (With Philip Trippenbach) | For Humanity 82 - For Humanity: An AI Risk Podcast - Air Date 3-28-26

D4: Those Graduation Speakers Getting Booed Right Now - Man Carrying Thing - Air Date 5-23-26


 

Produced by Jay! Tomlinson

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Showing 1 reaction

  • Ben Grant
    published this page in Episodes 2026-06-03 10:19:33 -0400
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