The AI Enshittification Bubble | Cory Doctorow

In Episode 492 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with science fiction author, journalist, and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow—who coined the term "enshittification"—about why he believes the AI bubble will prove more damaging than the 2008 financial crisis and rival the equity sell-off of the 2020 Covid pandemic, the theory he has developed to explain why everything keeps getting worse, why the companies leading the AI boom are structurally unprofitable and existentially dependent on a runaway growth narrative, and where the value in AI may actually accrue once the bubble deflates or bursts entirely.

The first hour covers the central argument of Doctorow's book on enshittification, which goes beyond simply describing how things are getting worse—from the extractive nature of online relationships to the soul-sucking experience of dealing with burned-out call-center operators and mindless chatbots—to put forward a theory for why, based on what has happened to competition, regulation, interoperability, and the bargaining power of workers. From there, they compare the prevailing business models and unit economics of the early web companies and large platforms to those leading the charge in AI, and why Doctorow believes the latter are not only structurally unprofitable but existentially dependent on a growth narrative of runaway AI that will run out of capital before it ever delivers the promise and profits its investors are banking on.

The second hour continues the conversation about the AI boom—how retirement accounts and index-fund concentration have raised the stakes of an eventual bust, and how new forms of regulatory forbearance, including the mechanics of the recent SpaceX public listing, along with other more explicit government bailouts, will be needed to prop up otherwise unsustainable valuations. They close with the narrative gap between AI-driven job displacement and what the data actually tells us, and where the value in AI may accrue once the bubble deflates—from open-source models and cheap hardware to the skilled workers and infrastructure needed to capitalize on them.

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Episode Recorded on 07/27/2026