Jathan Sadowski

@jathansadowski

ARC Future Fellow – Monash University /// co-host – This Machine Kills /// critical insurance tech + climate risk governance /// political economy of technology and capitalism:

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Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· 15d

I’m officially an Australian citizen!

Picture of Jathan and his wife holding an Australian Citizenship certificate

Picture of a flyer that says Citizenship Ceremony surrounded by Australian native plants and animals.

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· 16d

On October 28th in Melbourne, I'm going to be doing a public event at Northcote Library on AI and the Politics of Big Tech. It'll be a fun community event, free and accessible for everybody! www.eventbrite.com.au/e/in-convers...

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· 16d

I have a new article where I outline a materialist analysis of the machine learning value chain via three interrelated concepts that are all key for understanding this political economy: innovation realism, cheap data, and the perpetual value machine. Preprint here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Title: Deconstructing the Machine Learning Value Chain

Author: Jathan Sadowski

Abstract: This essay offers a materialist analysis of machine learning in the form of a critical intervention that deconstructs the value chain of this technological paradigm. It is structured around three interrelated concepts that provide a deeper understanding of the political economy of machine learning. First is innovation realism: the idea that venture capital is the best or only way to support innovation, and alternative approaches are inferior or impossible. Second is cheap data: the structural contradiction that, despite data being the most essential part of technological capitalism, it is also the most undervalued and taken for granted. Third is the perpetual value machine: the pursuit by capital to create technologies that capture an infinite amount of surplus value without needing to rely on any additional human labor to produce that value.

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· 20d

The Mayo Clinic's AI assistant has serious privacy problems, an extremely high error rate, and a team that manipulated data to lie about the tool. After raising concerns, the research director and AI compliance lead was fired. The future is bright! futurism.com/health-medic...

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· 20d

This juxtaposition in @keanbirch.bsky.social’s new essay on Tech Oligarchy is among the best compliments I’ve ever received. I tried to write my book as a spiritual sequel to The Whale and The Reactor, so this comparison by a scholar of Kean’s caliber is so nice. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Jun 5

An analysis of data center developments and community responses shows that resistance really works! In @bcmerchant.bsky.social’s latest newsletter: www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/working-cl...

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Jun 3

Also, this is not sophisticated use of AI. Taking ten seconds to dump PDFs into Copilot and telling it to write like me is so far from smart, sophisticated, or human-centered use of technology. Get real! Stop deceiving yourself!

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· May 14

My book has been chosen for next month's edition of the LEFT BOOK CLUB. Sign up now to receive this special edition paperback of my book, plus more monthly picks of the best leftist books, both contemporary and classics, and read along with a big community of comrades! leftbookclub.com/join/

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· May 5

A town meeting in January intended to answer people’s questions [about data centers] felt more like a marketing session, residents said. “I think it’s sneaky,” Ms. Peedle said. Projects are given obscure names, like “Project Cannoli,” and “Project Cherry Blossom.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/u...

But it was the sheer scale of the proposals, the suddenness with which they’ve appeared and the secrecy surrounding them that is punching emotion into the issue, turning out thousands of Democrats and Republicans for tense town hall meetings around the state.

Residents said they often discovered a data center project in their town through a quiet rezoning request by a company no one recognized. They said their small town boards were outmatched compared with wealthy companies in a hurry to break ground.

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Apr 15

lmao we live in such a stupid world “Struggling shoe retailer Allbirds makes bizarre pivot to AI, adds $127 million in value” www.cnbc.com/2026/04/15/a...

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Mar 24

I'm going to be doing this webinar on AI and insurance tomorrow with two incredible scholars. It's going to be a great discussion. Come along! dtdlab.virginia.edu/event/co-opt...

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Mar 24

I came across one of the most cursed objects imaginable sitting on the street in San Francisco. The contradictions are monstrous.

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Mar 23

Yet another case of automated austerity. When the humans in the loop are actually just treated as vestigial organs waiting to be removed. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03...

A new algorithm for determining how much aged care support people can receive to remain living at home is being blamed for reducing care for older Australians.

Peter Willcocks, who was on a Department of Health aged care panel, likens the new Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) system to the Robodebt fiasco because clinical assessors cannot override its algorithm — even if they think the person deserves a higher level of care.

Early communications from the department advised assessors they would have the power to "override" the algorithm, but that option was later removed.

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Mar 14

Economics is the devil's discipline. This is such a diabolical conclusion: if poor people want cheaper insurance, then they should spend money paying off debt and raising their credit scores rather than repairing their homes after disaster.

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Mar 14

"The entire economy, its structure and operating logic, is a nesting doll of delusion, rentiers and debt. Now the smallest doll is wearing a suicide vest, in the form of consumer debt. edit card balances have reached a record high, with millions likely to default." www.tank.tv/magazine/iss...

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Mar 14

"Prediction markets are liquidity extraction machines, slightly more gentle than a mugging... But prediction markets make it even easier to part users from that money. You don’t have to sell them anything but an illusion of possibility." www.tank.tv/magazine/iss...

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Mar 10

We're doing a TMK live show in San Francisco next week with the wonderful folks at @bayareacurrent.bsky.social and @dsasf.org. Come join us for a night of left-wing tech criticism! Registration is free, encouraged, but not required: www.eventbrite.com/e/decoding-t...

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Mar 4

They look like differently irradiated versions of the same guy

side by side pictures of Glenn Beck, Richard Branson, and Steven Bannon below a headline that says Pro-human AI declaration brings together unlikely group calling for trustworthy tech
An eclectic group including Steve Bannon, Glenn Beck, Richard Branson, Ralph Nader, Susan Rice and Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu signed the letter.

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Feb 26

This is good right?

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Feb 24

In the new TMK Premium, we are joined by Wendy Liu and Jimmy Wu to discuss the rising milieu of right-wing culture in San Francisco, from the growing scene of tech intelligentsia magazines to the hostile architecture of exclusionary urbanism and psychic damage of B2B SAAS billboards.

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Feb 19

lmao come on now, this is just insulting

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Feb 18

www.ucpress.edu/books/the-me...

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Feb 14

These companies are more evil than most their critics are ever willing to admit. They are so conniving and cynical, it’s almost a caricature of soulless corporate dystopia. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Feb 2

I think often of a tweet I saw that was like "if your kid actually reads books, they're gonna be one of the smartest people in like ten years" arxiv.org/abs/2601.20245

How AI Impacts Skill Formation
Judy Hanwen Shen, Alex Tamkin
AI assistance produces significant productivity gains across professional domains, particularly for novice workers. Yet how this assistance affects the development of skills required to effectively supervise AI remains unclear. Novice workers who rely heavily on AI to complete unfamiliar tasks may compromise their own skill acquisition in the process. We conduct randomized experiments to study how developers gained mastery of a new asynchronous programming library with and without the assistance of AI. We find that AI use impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains on average. Participants who fully delegated coding tasks showed some productivity improvements, but at the cost of learning the library. We identify six distinct AI interaction patterns, three of which involve cognitive engagement and preserve learning outcomes even when participants receive AI assistance. Our findings suggest that AI-enhanced productivity is not a shortcut to competence and AI assistance should be carefully adopted into workflows to preserve skill formation -- particularly in safety-critical domains.

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Jan 23

Just found out that my article "When Data is Capital" has been translated into Turkish and published in the media studies journal Yeni Medya. Pretty cool! dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/yenim...

screenshot of the title and abstract of my paper in Turkish

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Jan 23

"The strike was the tactic of choice for the proletariat in the days of industrialized production b/c most people could reach out and touch the economy. But many cannot do so directly now b/c they are locked out entirely or their manager is an algorithm, an app, a ghost." – sarahljaffe.bsky.social

Picture of a care on fire with graffiti that says "fuck ICE" and the title of the essay:

Capitalism Without Humans
As new technologies (not immigrants) replace human labor, “machine breaking” as a tactic of rebellion is taking on a renewed vitality.
Sarah Jaffe January 21, 2026

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Dec 4

"blicked by a cutie patootie" is a new contender for most beautiful phrase in English

left: picture of a woman wearing a sweater and skirt
right: same woman pulling down her skirt to reveal a hidden handgun in a holster
caption: "imagine getting blicked by a cutie patootie. Bet not run up on Emily at Barnes & Nobles she got sum for ya"

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Nov 29

Yet another prime case of Potemkin AI. I hate seeing an “AI notetaker” in a zoom call recording everything. In some cases, these notetakers were literally just a guy writing everything down. We too often see vaporous hype leading to the credulous embrace of fraudulent systems.

Sam Udotong in - 1st
Co-founder & CTO at Fireflies.ai
10h •
•••
We charged $100/month for an Al that was really just two guys surviving on pizza.
We scaled Fireflies to a $1B valuation after 6 failures from our original crypto food delivery idea.
Nothing motivates you more than the pressure of living month to month with no safety net.
Before I explain how 2 broke guys validated a $1B idea, you need to understand we were couch surfing while desperately chasing our entrepreneurial dreams. An Al notetaker was our last hope after 6 ideas our friends claimed were "genius".
The best way to validate your business idea is by becoming the product yourself.
We told our customers there's an "Al that'll join a meeting." In reality it was just me and my co-founder calling in to the meeting sitting there silently and taking notes by hand.
When customers scheduled a meeting, we'd manually dial in as "Fred from Fireflies.ai" We'd sit there silently, take detailed notes, and send them 10 minutes later. After taking notes for 100+ meetings (and falling asleep in many), we were finally able to make enough money to pay the $750/month rent for a tiny SF living room. That was the point when we said let's stop and automate everything.
The best prototype was 2 guys surviving on pizza. Validation before automation saved us from our 7th failure.

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Nov 25

Call for PhD Student! I'm recruiting a PhD student to work with me on a project related to my Future Fellowship at Monash University on the political economy of insurance, risk technology, climate governance, and the crisis of uninsurability. Here's the overview of my fellowship.

A necessary analysis of polycrisis and its consequences must account for the industries, technologies, and policies that govern risks-and, crucially, how they engage in socio-technical processes of defining, predicting, and valuing risks. By synthesising the following objectives into a cohesive research program, this Future Fellowship aims to create essential empirical knowledge about urgent problems of insurability, which will inform new policy solutions and critical theories, all for the purpose of understanding and tackling the complex polycrisis at the nexus of insurance markets, risk technologies, and climate governance regimes.
• Objective 1: Examine the design and construction of climate risk models by insurance industry and risk analytics firms to identify the assumptions, trade-offs, values, and goals built into these systems.
• Objective 2: Engage directly with governments and communities at the frontlines of risk vulnerability to understand how abstract computational models and simulations connect to lived experiences and ground truth.
• Objective 3: Develop new policies and frameworks for climate risk justice, which are informed by original empirical work and contribute to greater equity and security in risk governance.
• Objective 4: Generate critical theoretical contributions that guide analytical and applied work about the techno-politics of risk governance in an age of global polycrisis.
This fellowship advances our understanding of climate risk governance across three Workstreams. Workstream 1 will conduct ethnography at insurance industry conferences and with companies building climate risk models.
Workstream 2 will engage in research with governments and communities who are managing the risks and realities of uninsurability from natural disasters. Workstream 3 will collaborate with a climate policy think tank to develop innovative policies grounded in original empirical research and conceptual analysis-that advance climate justice.

Jathan Sadowski@jathansadowski· Oct 23

Melbourne folks! I'm going to be part of a Luddite Tribunal organised by the Brunswick Library — you gotta love public libraries and their critical workers — on November 27th at 6:30pm. I'll be joined by Lizzie O'Shea; it'll be a ton of fun! Free registration: www.eventbrite.com.au/e/the-luddit...