Greetings all —
Busy week in BITM land. Got home from some travel only to take off to SF to speak on a panel about AI and work for a CalMatters conference with state lawmakers and labor leaders, and made it back to LA in time for the 404 live event night, where I had the pleasure of bumping into a bunch of BITM readers. I met ambitious students examining the history of tech and labor in the entertainment industry, veteran tech policy campaigners, and some young critical journos. You all are the best. It ALSO makes me think I should throw a BITM event or meetup of some kind one of these days—readers have suggested this before, and I like the idea, I’ve just been so slammed. I digress.
For those interested, I did an interview with TIME Magazine’s Charter project. It was not my most eloquent spot—exhaustion!—but I think some good points came through. Also chatted with indy media/freelancer advocacy outlet Study Hall about AI in journalism.
It was also a busy week in the AI world, though that’s hardly surprising, for reasons pertinent to the news we’re about to discuss. Without further ado, in this issue, we’ll dive into
-Microsoft’s AI-fueled $4 trillion valuation
-AI is driving so much investment it’s like a “private sector stimulus program” papering over losses to tariffs
And this week’s CRITICAL AI REPORT, with
-How America’s professors are organizing to fight the push of AI into higher ed
-The fury over an AI model appearing in Vogue
-Inside the collapse of Builder.AI, the AI company that wasn’t
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