Brian Merchant reposted
“liz you can just use AI as a research tool, don’t be such a Luddite” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/b...
Who's Who of AI
Brian Merchant
Why they matter
Tracked through public AI activity and peer connections inside the directory.
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author of Blood in the Machine, tech writer, luddite
newsletter: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/
books: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/contributor/brian-merchant/
kofi link: https://ko-fi.com/brianmerchant
What they're sharing
Book on Truth in the Age of A.I. Contains Quotes Made Up by A.I. nytimes.com
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Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked 404media.co
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Even If You Hate AI, You Will Use Google AI Search | WIRED wired.com
'We Will Fight to Our Very Last Breath:' Township Leaders Vow to Fight Nuclear AI Data Center 404media.co
Anthropic Is Still at Odds With the White House Over Claude Fable 5 wired.com
Get with the times — here's what a 'Luddite' means today npr.org
The AI Compass bambamramfan.github.io
bloodinthemachine.com
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Articles & links
Brian Merchant reposted
NEW: Hackers say that they used Meta’s AI support chatbot to break into a host of high-profile Instagram profiles by asking the support bot to change the email address associated with the target account.
Counterpoint: No I will not
I discuss the fiery opposition to an AI data center in Michigan, proposed to help train nuclear weapons, via @404media.co and @mjgault.bsky.social's reporting, in which a pastor's wife suggests brushing up on the OSS's Simple Sabotage Field Manual at a town hall meeting.
(from this WIRED writeup of the debacle) www.wired.com/story/anthro...
NPR has a 'Word of the Week' series, and this week it's LUDDITE I spoke with Emma Bowman about who they really were and about the new luddites organizing against big tech + AI A fun one and, since it's airing on All Things Considered, maybe the biggest-audience luddite rehabil…
deeply insulted that I didn't make the cut for even a derogatory archetype here bambamramfan.github.io/ai-compass/
Wrote about the college kids booing AI, and how, in a moment rife with economic precarity, affordability crises, and collapsing job prospects, AI has become a new avatar of American capitalism
Last week, IT employees at the University of California system across the state formed the largest tech worker union in the United States. This is how they now plan to confront tech industry layoffs, rein in AI, and push for tech for the common good:
Anthropic's Mythos campaign—it must be understood as a marketing campaign above all—was the ne plus ultra of AI doom marketing. It was instrumental in vaulting Anthropic to its latest valuation and status as the top AI startup. But as AI firms are increasingly finding, there a…
Anthropic went from a distant #2 in the AI startup race to winning news cycles, sharing the stage with the pope, eclipsing OpenAI's valuation and barreling towards an historic IPO, all in a matter of months. How did Anthropic pull it off? By doubling down on its key export: AI…
Now that the World Cup, with all of its controversies and complexities, is over, we can all agree on at least one thing: VAR sucks. It is the generative AI of the sports world. www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/what-var-t...
Their own posts
Recent commentary
This Anthropic/White House spat is funny. Anthropic spent months declaring that its model is so powerful at finding bugs it threatens the world's digital infrastructure. The WH says OK it's banned then Now Anthropic and its allies have to say actually you know it isn't "uniquely good" at that stuff
I'm in Paris, and the entire time I've been here I've seen advertisements for Le Monde's special issue TOUT LE MONDE DETESTE L'IA (All the World Hates AI). I've seen graffiti on metro ads marking them as AI SLOP, and a big scrawl at one stop that read F*CK IA.
My kingdom for a good, entirely AI-free web browser
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In Brian Merchant's orbit
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