Quick Read
- Cory Doctorow warns that AI is being used by billionaires to bypass human agency and labor rights.
- Amazon warehouse injury rates are 300% higher than average due to automation pressure.
- The concept of the ‘unnecessariat’ suggests a future where workers are surplus to economic requirements.
- Politicians view AI as a way to maintain productivity while satisfying anti-migrant sentiments.
The Capitalist Pivot Toward Total Automation
On June 2, 2026, prominent tech critic and author Cory Doctorow issued a scathing indictment of the global technology elite, characterizing the current obsession with Artificial Intelligence (AI) not as a quest for efficiency, but as an aggressive attempt to bypass human agency. According to Doctorow, the tech industry’s pivot toward AI represents a trillion-dollar gamble designed to eliminate the ‘bottleneck’ of human priorities. The stakes are quantified by massive capital expenditures that demand the maximum extraction of value from remaining human workers, often at the cost of physical safety and social cohesion.
The Bezos Model: Humans as Machine Peripherals
A primary focus of Doctorow’s critique is the logistics empire of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. He argues that the deployment of advanced automation in warehouses has not liberated workers but has instead subjected them to inhumane physical demands. Data indicates that workers in Bezos’s highly automated facilities suffer serious injuries at a rate of 300 percent of the national average. Doctorow posits that this is a direct result of automation capital expenditure (capex). When a corporation commits hundreds of billions to mechanical assets, it must run those assets at full capacity to recoup the investment. In this configuration, the remaining humans are treated as ‘peripherals’—biological components that must match the tireless pace of the machine until they are physically broken.
The Social Substitution: Zuckerberg’s Post-Human Platforms
The critique extends to the social sphere, specifically targeting Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Doctorow suggests that the drive to integrate AI into social media platforms is an attempt to solve the problem of ‘stubborn’ users. Human friends are suboptimal for revenue because they do not always organize their lives to maximize engagement or ad views. By replacing human interaction with AI chatbots, social media owners hope to create a environment where ‘socializing’ occurs without the unpredictability of human social bonds. This transition seeks to transform platforms from tools of human coordination into closed loops of algorithmic persuasion where the owner’s priorities are never challenged by the user’s autonomy.
The Geopolitical ‘Fix’: AI as a Substitute for Migration
Perhaps the most provocative aspect of Doctorow’s analysis is the intersection of AI and national policy. Wealthy, aging nations face a paradox: they require young, skilled labor to maintain productivity, yet their political climates are increasingly hostile to migration. Doctorow argues that politicians view AI as a ‘miracle’ solution to this double-bind. If AI can pick crops, staff hospitals, and file lawsuits, the state can satisfy the anti-migrant sentiments of its voters without the economic collapse that would normally follow a labor shortage. Unlike migrant workers, AI makes no moral demands and does not introduce new cultures or languages, making it the perfect tool for maintaining a wealthy, insular society.
From Proletariat to the Unnecessariat
The ultimate trajectory of this technological shift is the creation of what Doctorow calls the ‘unnecessariat.’ While the industrial age transformed the workforce into a proletariat—exploited but essential—the AI age threatens to render workers entirely surplus to requirements. This vision is epitomized by Sam Altman’s interest in biometric-controlled Universal Basic Income (UBI). In this scenario, productive work is performed entirely by software owned by a few, while the rest of humanity exists at the sufferance of the tech elite, receiving vouchers for services provided by the very robots that replaced them. This ‘retinal-scanning dystopia’ represents the final stage of replacing social coordination with total technological coercion.
Doctorow’s analysis highlights a critical policy failure: the conflation of technological progress with the erosion of human rights. By framing AI as a tool to bypass the ‘stubbornness’ of humanity, tech leaders are effectively dismantling the social contracts that have governed labor and governance since the Industrial Revolution. The 300% injury rate in automated warehouses serves as a leading indicator of a future where human safety is systematically sacrificed to service the debt of automation. If the goal of AI is to render the majority of the population unnecessary to the production of value, the resulting political instability will likely exceed the capacity of any algorithmic solution to manage, necessitating a re-evaluation of how automation is regulated at the institutional level.