Full Width 
FOCUS MODE
Shortcuts 
Sign Up 
Log In 
Articles 
Reading List More from Sam Altman
The second birthday of ChatGPT was only a little over a month ago, and now we have transitioned into the next paradigm of models that can do complex reasoning. New years get people in a reflective mood, and I wanted to share some personal thoughts about how it has gone so far, and some of the things I’ve learned along the way. As we get closer to AGI, it feels like an important time to look at the progress of our company. There is still so much to understand, still so much we don’t know, and it’s still so early. But we know a lot more than we did when we started. We started OpenAI almost nine years ago because we believed that AGI was possible, and that it could be the most impactful technology in human history. We wanted to figure out how to build it and make it broadly beneficial; we were excited to try to make our mark on history. Our ambitions were extraordinarily high and so was our belief that the work might benefit society in an equally extraordinary way. At the time, very few people cared, and if they did, it was mostly because they thought we had no chance of success. In 2022, OpenAI was a quiet research lab working on something temporarily called “Chat With GPT-3.5”. (We are much better at research than we are at naming things.) We had been watching people use the playground feature of our API and knew that developers were really enjoying talking to the model. We thought building a demo around that experience would show people something important about the future and help us make our models better and safer. We ended up mercifully calling it ChatGPT instead, and launched it on November 30th of 2022. We always knew, abstractly, that at some point we would hit a tipping point and the AI revolution would get kicked off. But we didn’t know what the moment would be. To our surprise, it turned out to be this. The launch of ChatGPT kicked off a growth curve like nothing we have ever seen—in our company, our industry, and the world broadly. We are finally seeing some of the massive upside we have always hoped for from AI, and we can see how much more will come soon. It hasn’t been easy. The road hasn’t been smooth and the right choices haven’t been obvious. In the last two years, we had to build an entire company, almost from scratch, around this new technology. There is no way to train people for this except by doing it, and when the technology category is completely new, there is no one at all who can tell you exactly how it should be done. Building up a company at such high velocity with so little training is a messy process. It’s often two steps forward, one step back (and sometimes, one step forward and two steps back). Mistakes get corrected as you go along, but there aren’t really any handbooks or guideposts when you’re doing original work. Moving at speed in uncharted waters is an incredible experience, but it is also immensely stressful for all the players. Conflicts and misunderstanding abound. These years have been the most rewarding, fun, best, interesting, exhausting, stressful, and—particularly for the last two—unpleasant years of my life so far. The overwhelming feeling is gratitude; I know that someday I’ll be retired at our ranch watching the plants grow, a little bored, and will think back at how cool it was that I got to do the work I dreamed of since I was a little kid. I try to remember that on any given Friday, when seven things go badly wrong by 1 pm. A little over a year ago, on one particular Friday, the main thing that had gone wrong that day was that I got fired by surprise on a video call, and then right after we hung up the board published a blog post about it. I was in a hotel room in Las Vegas. It felt, to a degree that is almost impossible to explain, like a dream gone wrong. Getting fired in public with no warning kicked off a really crazy few hours, and a pretty crazy few days. The “fog of war” was the strangest part. None of us were able to get satisfactory answers about what had happened, or why. The whole event was, in my opinion, a big failure of governance by well-meaning people, myself included. Looking back, I certainly wish I had done things differently, and I’d like to believe I’m a better, more thoughtful leader today than I was a year ago. I also learned the importance of a board with diverse viewpoints and broad experience in managing a complex set of challenges. Good governance requires a lot of trust and credibility. I appreciate the way so many people worked together to build a stronger system of governance for OpenAI that enables us to pursue our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits all of humanity. My biggest takeaway is how much I have to be thankful for and how many people I owe gratitude towards: to everyone who works at OpenAI and has chosen to spend their time and effort going after this dream, to friends who helped us get through the crisis moments, to our partners and customers who supported us and entrusted us to enable their success, and to the people in my life who showed me how much they cared. [1] We all got back to the work in a more cohesive and positive way and I’m very proud of our focus since then. We have done what is easily some of our best research ever. We grew from about 100 million weekly active users to more than 300 million. Most of all, we have continued to put technology out into the world that people genuinely seem to love and that solves real problems. Nine years ago, we really had no idea what we were eventually going to become; even now, we only sort of know. AI development has taken many twists and turns and we expect more in the future. Some of the twists have been joyful; some have been hard. It’s been fun watching a steady stream of research miracles occur, and a lot of naysayers have become true believers. We’ve also seen some colleagues split off and become competitors. Teams tend to turn over as they scale, and OpenAI scales really fast. I think some of this is unavoidable—startups usually see a lot of turnover at each new major level of scale, and at OpenAI numbers go up by orders of magnitude every few months. The last two years have been like a decade at a normal company. When any company grows and evolves so fast, interests naturally diverge. And when any company in an important industry is in the lead, lots of people attack it for all sorts of reasons, especially when they are trying to compete with it. Our vision won’t change; our tactics will continue to evolve. For example, when we started we had no idea we would have to build a product company; we thought we were just going to do great research. We also had no idea we would need such a crazy amount of capital. There are new things we have to go build now that we didn’t understand a few years ago, and there will be new things in the future we can barely imagine now. We are proud of our track-record on research and deployment so far, and are committed to continuing to advance our thinking on safety and benefits sharing. We continue to believe that the best way to make an AI system safe is by iteratively and gradually releasing it into the world, giving society time to adapt and co-evolve with the technology, learning from experience, and continuing to make the technology safer. We believe in the importance of being world leaders on safety and alignment research, and in guiding that research with feedback from real world applications. We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it. We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce” and materially change the output of companies. We continue to believe that iteratively putting great tools in the hands of people leads to great, broadly-distributed outcomes. We are beginning to turn our aim beyond that, to superintelligence in the true sense of the word. We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future. With superintelligence, we can do anything else. Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity. This sounds like science fiction right now, and somewhat crazy to even talk about it. That’s alright—we’ve been there before and we’re OK with being there again. We’re pretty confident that in the next few years, everyone will see what we see, and that the need to act with great care, while still maximizing broad benefit and empowerment, is so important. Given the possibilities of our work, OpenAI cannot be a normal company. How lucky and humbling it is to be able to play a role in this work. (Thanks to Josh Tyrangiel for sort of prompting this. I wish we had had a lot more time.) [1] There were a lot of people who did incredible and gigantic amounts of work to help OpenAI, and me personally, during those few days, but two people stood out from all others. Ron Conway and Brian Chesky went so far above and beyond the call of duty that I’m not even sure how to describe it. I’ve of course heard stories about Ron’s ability and tenaciousness for years and I’ve spent a lot of time with Brian over the past couple of years getting a huge amount of help and advice. But there’s nothing quite like being in the foxhole with people to see what they can really do. I am reasonably confident OpenAI would have fallen apart without their help; they worked around the clock for days until things were done. Although they worked unbelievably hard, they stayed calm and had clear strategic thought and great advice throughout. They stopped me from making several mistakes and made none themselves. They used their vast networks for everything needed and were able to navigate many complex situations. And I’m sure they did a lot of things I don’t know about. What I will remember most, though, is their care, compassion, and support. I thought I knew what it looked like to support a founder and a company, and in some small sense I did. But I have never before seen, or even heard of, anything like what these guys did, and now I get more fully why they have the legendary status they do. They are different and both fully deserve their genuinely unique reputations, but they are similar in their remarkable ability to move mountains and help, and in their unwavering commitment in times of need. The tech industry is far better off for having both of them in it. There are others like them; it is an amazingly special thing about our industry and does much more to make it all work than people realize. I look forward to paying it forward. On a more personal note, thanks especially to Ollie for his support that weekend and always; he is incredible in every way and no one could ask for a better partner.
There are two things from our announcement today I wanted to highlight. First, a key part of our mission is to put very capable AI tools in the hands of people for free (or at a great price). I am very proud that we’ve made the best model in the world available for free in ChatGPT, without ads or anything like that. Our initial conception when we started OpenAI was that we’d create AI and use it to create all sorts of benefits for the world. Instead, it now looks like we’ll create AI and then other people will use it to create all sorts of amazing things that we all benefit from. We are a business and will find plenty of things to charge for, and that will help us provide free, outstanding AI service to (hopefully) billions of people. Second, the new voice (and video) mode is the best computer interface I’ve ever used. It feels like AI from the movies; and it’s still a bit surprising to me that it’s real. Getting to human-level response times and expressiveness turns out to be a big change. The original ChatGPT showed a hint of what was possible with language interfaces; this new thing feels viscerally different. It is fast, smart, fun, natural, and helpful. Talking to a computer has never felt really natural for me; now it does. As we add (optional) personalization, access to your information, the ability to take actions on your behalf, and more, I can really see an exciting future where we are able to use computers to do much more than ever before. Finally, huge thanks to the team that poured so much work into making this happen!
Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started. Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are how things get finished. Long-term orientation is in short supply; try not to worry about what people think in the short term, which will get easier over time. It is easier for a team to do a hard thing that really matters than to do an easy thing that doesn’t really matter; audacious ideas motivate people. Incentives are superpowers; set them carefully. Concentrate your resources on a small number of high-conviction bets; this is easy to say but evidently hard to do. You can delete more stuff than you think. Communicate clearly and concisely. Fight bullshit and bureaucracy every time you see it and get other people to fight it too. Do not let the org chart get in the way of people working productively together. Outcomes are what count; don’t let good process excuse bad results. Spend more time recruiting. Take risks on high-potential people with a fast rate of improvement. Look for evidence of getting stuff done in addition to intelligence. Superstars are even more valuable than they seem, but you have to evaluate people on their net impact on the performance of the organization. Fast iteration can make up for a lot; it’s usually ok to be wrong if you iterate quickly. Plans should be measured in decades, execution should be measured in weeks. Don’t fight the business equivalent of the laws of physics. Inspiration is perishable and life goes by fast. Inaction is a particularly insidious type of risk. Scale often has surprising emergent properties. Compounding exponentials are magic. In particular, you really want to build a business that gets a compounding advantage with scale. Get back up and keep going. Working with great people is one of the best parts of life.
Helion has been progressing even faster than I expected and is on pace in 2024 to 1) demonstrate Q > 1 fusion and 2) resolve all questions needed to design a mass-producible fusion generator. The goals of the company are quite ambitious—clean, continuous energy for 1 cent per kilowatt-hour, and the ability to manufacture enough power plants to satisfy the current electrical demand of earth in a ten year period. If both things happen, it will transform the world. Abundant, clean, and radically inexpensive energy will elevate the quality of life for all of us—think about how much the cost of energy factors into what we do and use. Also, electricity at this price will allow us to do things like efficiently capture carbon (so although we’ll still rely on gasoline for awhile, it’ll be ok). Although Helion’s scientific progress of the past 8 years is phenomenal and necessary, it is not sufficient to rapidly get to this new energy economy. Helion now needs to figure out how to engineer machines that don’t break, how to build a factory and supply chain capable of manufacturing a machine every day, how to work with power grids and governments around the world, and more. The biggest input to the degree and speed of success at the company is now the talent of the people who join the team. Here are a few of the most critical jobs, but please don’t let the lack of a perfect fit deter you from applying. Electrical Engineer, Low Voltage: https://boards.greenhouse.io/helionenergy/jobs/4044506005 Electrical Engineer, Pulsed Power: https://boards.greenhouse.io/helionenergy/jobs/4044510005 Mechanical Engineer, Generator Systems: https://boards.greenhouse.io/helionenergy/jobs/4044522005 Manager of Mechanical Engineering: https://boards.greenhouse.io/helionenergy/jobs/4044521005 (All current jobs: https://www.helionenergy.com/careers/)
More in AI
Today's links Radical juries: They sure hate Big Tech. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: DIY TSA universal keys; Steve Jackson Games raid +20. Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. Colophon: All the rest. Radical juries (permalink) I don't know if you've heard, but water has started running uphill – I mean, speaking in a politico-scientific sense: https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/28/mamdani/#trustbusting By which I mean, the bedrock consensus of political science appears to have been disproved. Broadly speaking, political scientists believe that lawmakers and regulators only respond to the policy preferences of powerful people. If economic elites want a policy, that's the policy we get – no matter how unpopular it is with everyone else. Likewise, even if something is very, very popular with all of us, we won't get it if the super-rich hate it. Just take a look at the gap between public opinion and policy outcomes: most people think "capitalism does more harm than good"; most Canadians, Britons and Australians aged 18-34 think "socialism will improve the economy and well-being of citizens"; 72% of Brits support a national job guarantee; the majority of Californians support permanent rent-controls; and most people in 40 countries want CEO salaries capped at 4X that of their lowest-paid employees: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/07/the-people-no-2/#water-flowing-uphill The inability of the public to get its way isn't just an impressionistic view – it's an empirical finding, based on a representative sample of 1,779 policy outcomes, that politicians ignore the will of the people in favor of the will of billionaires: economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B And yet, all over the world, we're seeing these irrepressible outbreaks of antitrust policy, aimed squarely at shattering corporate power: https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/28/mamdani/#trustbusting It's a mystery. There's no policy that would be harder on billionaire wealth and power than vigorous antitrust enforcement (not least because preventing corporate concentration is key to preventing regulatory capture): https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/ Certainly, there are a lot of merely obscenely rich people who are angry that the farcically rich people are screwing them over, and this class division between the 0.01% and the 1% has opened up some political space: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/09/elite-disunity/#awoken-giants But that wouldn't be enough, not without the massive supermajorities of everyday people who are sick to the back teeth of being abused by corporations, and who are desperate for any outlet to strike back. Take juries. Orrick is a big corporate law firm that represents the kinds of companies that might find their future in the hands of a jury in a state or federal courthouse. Orrick periodically surveys representative samples of people who show up for jury service to get a picture of their attitude towards the kinds of companies that can afford to hire a firm like theirs: https://www.orrick.com/en/Insights/Groundbreaking-Jury-Research-Reveals-US-Jury-Attitudes-in-a-Polarized-Society Their latest report contrasts the results of a pre-pandemic 2019 survey with a 2025 survey of 1,011 jurors in California, Florida, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Texas, New Jersey, and New York. They found that jurors' trust in the court system has plummeted since 2019 (67% in 2019, 48% in 2025); hostility to cops has tripled (11% to 33%); anti-corporate sentiment is way up (27% then, 45% now). The percentage of jurors who believe that they should use the courts to "sent messages to companies to improve their behavior" has risen from 58% to 62%; and 77% want to award punitive damages to "punish a corporation" (up from 69%). And jurors are notably hostile to pharma companies, energy companies and large banks, but they especially hate social media companies. It's no wonder that corporations are so desperate to take away our right to sue them, and why "binding arbitration" clauses that permanently confiscate your legal rights are now part of every corner of modern life: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/15/dogs-breakfast/#by-clicking-this-you-agree-on-behalf-of-your-employer-to-release-me-from-all-obligations-and-waivers-arising-from-any-and-all-NON-NEGOTIATED-agreements The business lobby has been trying to take away workers' and customers' and citizens' right to seek justice in court for decades, ginning up urban legends like "A lady's coffee was too hot so McDonald's had to give her $2.7 million": https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico Don't believe it. The courts are rarely on our side, but the fact that sometimes, every now and again, a jury will seize an opportunity to deliver a smidgen of justice just drives plutocrats nuts. Billionaireism is the belief that you don't owe anything to anyone else, that morality is whatever you can get away with. You don't have to be a billionaire to contract a wicked case of billionaireism – but you do have to be stinking rich to benefit from it: https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/20/billionaireism/#surveillance-infantalism Hey look at this (permalink) How Uber Became A Cash-Generating Machine https://len-sherman.medium.com/how-uber-became-a-cash-generating-machine-ef78e7a97230 Agentic Browser Security: Indirect Prompt Injection in Perplexity Comet https://brave.com/blog/comet-prompt-injection/ Burner Phone 101 https://rebeccawilliams.info/burner-phone-101/ Commonwealth Bank backtracks on AI job cuts, apologises for 'error' as call volumes rise https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-21/cba-backtracks-on-ai-job-cuts-as-chatbot-lifts-call-volumes/105679492 It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes https://defector.com/it-took-many-years-and-billions-of-dollars-but-microsoft-finally-invented-a-calculator-that-is-wrong-sometimes?giftLink=50fb6d3bb4d7516dfa13deb4e27638de Object permanence (permalink) #20yrsago Google stealthily monitoring clickthroughs from search-results https://web.archive.org/web/20051119012842/http://mboffin.com/post.aspx?id=1830 #20yrsago Hunter S Thompson’s ashes in fireworks display — pics http://www.talkleft.com/story/2005/08/22/076/47806/media/Hunter-Thompson-s-Final-Blast-Off #10yrsago Make your own TSA universal luggage keys https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/where-oh-where-did-my-luggage-go/2014/11/24/16d168c6-69da-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html #10yrsago Regal promises security-theater bag-searches in America’s largest cinema chain https://www.techdirt.com/2015/08/21/tsa-movies-theater-chain-looks-to-bring-security-theater-to-movie-theater/ #10yrsago Judge: City of Inglewood can’t use copyright to censor videos of council meetings https://web.archive.org/web/20150821122121/http://popehat.com/2015/08/20/californias-city-of-inglewood-cant-copyright-city-council-meetings-case-against-youtube-critic-tossed/ #10yrsago EFF-Austin panel commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Steve Jackson Games raid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChPS4H-nqiQ #5yrsago Facebook overrules its own fact-checkers https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/21/zuck-the-scale-thumber/#scale-thumbers #5yrsago Rewarding CEOs for failure https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/21/zuck-the-scale-thumber/#failing-up Upcoming appearances (permalink) Ithaca: AD White keynote (Cornell), Sep 12 https://deanoffaculty.cornell.edu/events/keynote-cory-doctorow-professor-at-large/ DC: Enshittification at Politics and Prose, Oct 8 https://politics-prose.com/cory-doctorow-10825 New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12 http://www.contraflowscifi.org/ Chicago: Enshittification with Kara Swisher (Chicago Humanities), Oct 15 https://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/2025/10-15-2025-kara-swisher-and-cory-doctorow-on-enshittification/ San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20 https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25 Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469 Recent appearances (permalink) Divesting from Amazon’s Audible and the Fight for Digital Rights (Libro.fm) https://pocketcasts.com/podcasts/9349e8d0-a87f-013a-d8af-0acc26574db2/00e6cbcf-7f27-4589-a11e-93e4ab59c04b The Utopias Podcast https://www.buzzsprout.com/2272465/episodes/17650124 Tariffs vs IP Law (Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFABFe-5-uQ Latest books (permalink) "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels). "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245). "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com Upcoming books (permalink) "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/ "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026 Colophon (permalink) Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/). Currently writing: "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. (1036 words yesterday, 39136 words total). A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://pluralistic.net/plura-list Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://twitter.com/doctorow Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic "When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X
Understanding the job market beyond 'the market is bad' is
Today's links Melissa Mendes's "The Weight": Graphic novel as emotional roller-coaster. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Windows 10 killswitch; Ashley Madison copyfraud; Ulysses pacts; "Blackheart Man." Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. Colophon: All the rest. Melissa Mendes's "The Weight" (permalink) The Weight is Mellia Mendes's award-winning webcomic, now collected in a massive, beautifully made graphic novel from Drawn & Quarterly. It will tear your heart out, it will send you to a dreamy world of pastoral utopianism, then it will tear your heart out. Again: https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/the-weight/ In a rural midcentury Pennsylvania farmhouse, a young woman named Marian is going into labor. Her mother is by her side, her father goes outside to find Marian's husband, Ray, who is outside, bitterly smoking a cigarette. Marian's mother tells Ray he's about to become a father. Ray snaps, "Can't I just finish my fucking cigarette?" In just a few pages of economical storytelling, illustrated with simple ink-washes, Mendes sets in motion a story of cyclic abuse, unconditional love, redemption, and tragedy. "Economical" is a strange word to apply to Mendes's book, which is a fat 574 pages long (the book is a beautiful artifact, on thick paper that drinks the ink-wash illustrations and renders them in lush, mysterious gradients; the cover stock, embossing, and other features are all gorgeous, thoughtful and understated – this is a joy to hold). But the storytelling is economical, light on dialog, with panels that flow smoothly from one to the next, conveying a dynamic gestalt at the page level, and nuance in each panel. This economy of storytelling – including some brilliantly handled jumps in the action that leap several years at the turn of a page – makes the book fly by, such that I read it all (really it feels like I drank it all) in one sitting. You can read the first 17 pages at Drawn and Quarterly's website: https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/the-weight/ Marian and Ray end up on a military base where Marian works at the PX. Edie, the baby that was born in that opening scene, grows up in the shadow of vicious, relentless physical abuse, as Ray beats and torments Marian. Naturally, Edie spends a lot of time with her friends – and away from home – and we see how the rage within her ruptures under stress, sometimes hurting her, sometimes the children around her, and sometimes both. But these scenes also paint a picture of tender, wild camaraderie, the uncomplicated and pure friendship of children, thoughtlessly intense. We see how Edie is both rooted in this place, and also anchored there, unable to imagine life away from these kids. So when Marian finally leaves Ray, fearing for her life and Edie's, we feel Edie's pain at leaving – and then her heartbreak as her mother leaps off the train they are escaping on to intercept Ray and keep Edie safe. Edie makes her way to the grandparents who haven't seen her since the day of her birth, and the second act begins. This act is a long, beautiful coming of age story, as Edie heals, nurtured in the bosom of her loving, good grandparents; the bucolic life on the farm; the friends she surrounds herself with. Mendes gives us generous – but never drawn out – peeks into Edie's life as she matures from a child, to a teen, to a young woman. A young woman in love. The third act begins with Edie at 17, pregant by the boy next door, deciding to marry him and move out of state with him to a place where a relative can give them jobs and a trailer to live in and start their family. And before long, the cycle of abuse has begun again. The Weight is a ferocious read, the sweetness of the highs there to provide texture for the bitterness of the lows. Like a strip of white paper bisecting a sheet of black, the juxtaposition of the idyllic second act with the brutality of the beginning and end makes all three acts impossibly vivid. It's a story you won't soon forget. Hey look at this (permalink) On Not Surrendering in Advance, or During, or At Any Point Thereafter https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/on-not-surrendering-in-advance-or-during-or-at-any-point-thereafter/ Zohran Mamdani is the leader NYC needs for innovation and entrepreneurship https://www.anildash.com/2025/08/20/zohran_mamdani_is_the_nyc_innovation_leader/ RFK Jr. Cut Grants for Autism Research While Vowing to Find a Cause https://www.propublica.org/article/rfk-jr-autism-environment-research-funding Endoscopist deskilling risk after exposure to artificial intelligence in colonoscopy: a multicentre, observational study https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1253(25)00133-5/abstract stupid games, stupid prizes, slight returns https://backofmind.substack.com/p/stupid-games-stupid-prizes-slight Object permanence (permalink) #10yrsago Eat invasive species and enjoy guilt-free meat https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-19/invasive-species-chefs-latest-menu-offering #10yrsago Windows 10 EULA: Microsoft can killswitch your unauthorized hardware and pirate games https://www.alphr.com/microsoft/microsoft-windows-10/1001360/microsoft-can-disable-your-pirated-games-and-illegal-hardware/ #10yrsago Ashley Madison commits copyfraud in desperate bid to suppress news of its titanic leak https://web.archive.org/web/20150820170651/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/ashley-madison-sent-me-a-dmca-request-for-tweeting-two-cells-of-a-spreadsheet #10yrsago Your Android unlock pattern sucks as much as your password did https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/new-data-uncovers-the-surprising-predictability-of-android-lock-patterns/ #10yrsago Universities’ tax-exempt giga-endowments spend more on hedge fund managers than on education https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/opinion/stop-universities-from-hoarding-money.html #10yrsago Science is really fucking hard https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/ #10yrsago Ulysses pacts and spying hacks: warrant canaries and binary transparency https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/20/warrant-canaries-a-subtle-hint-that-your-email-provider-is-compromised #10yrsago America does a better job of tracking bee deaths than deaths in police custody https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/aug/20/bees-not-bodies/ #10yrsago “I hope the Chinese aren’t collating the Ashley Madison data with their handy federal list of every American with a security clearance.” -Bruce Sterling https://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/127151439198/man-those-are-some-savage-vigilantes-i-hope #10yrsago Google covertly lobbied against net neutrality in India https://www.medianama.com/2015/08/223-google-iamai-net-neutrality-india/ #5yrsago Boeing fixes the 737 Max problem https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/20/dubious-quantitative-residue/#737-8 #5yrsago College Covid app is a security dumpster-fire https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/20/dubious-quantitative-residue/#thick-description #5yrsago The Mail https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/20/dubious-quantitative-residue/#franked #1yrago Nalo Hopkinson's "Blackheart Man" https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/20/piche/#cynchin Upcoming appearances (permalink) Ithaca: AD White keynote (Cornell), Sep 12 https://deanoffaculty.cornell.edu/events/keynote-cory-doctorow-professor-at-large/ DC: Enshittification at Politics and Prose, Oct 8 https://politics-prose.com/cory-doctorow-10825 New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12 http://www.contraflowscifi.org/ Chicago: Enshittification with Kara Swisher (Chicago Humanities), Oct 15 https://www.oldtownschool.org/concerts/2025/10-15-2025-kara-swisher-and-cory-doctorow-on-enshittification/ San Francisco: Enshittification at Public Works (The Booksmith), Oct 20 https://app.gopassage.com/events/doctorow25 Miami: Enshittification at Books & Books, Nov 5 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-1504647263469 Recent appearances (permalink) Divesting from Amazon’s Audible and the Fight for Digital Rights (Libro.fm) https://pocketcasts.com/podcasts/9349e8d0-a87f-013a-d8af-0acc26574db2/00e6cbcf-7f27-4589-a11e-93e4ab59c04b The Utopias Podcast https://www.buzzsprout.com/2272465/episodes/17650124 Tariffs vs IP Law (Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFABFe-5-uQ Latest books (permalink) "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels). "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245). "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com Upcoming books (permalink) "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/ "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026 Colophon (permalink) Today's top sources: Currently writing: "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. (1020 words yesterday, 38103 words total). A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://pluralistic.net/plura-list Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://twitter.com/doctorow Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic "When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer. ISSN: 3066-764X
The realistic take on 'software engineers being cooked' because AI can write code
