This Week in Tech (Audio) TWiT 1074: Chicken Mating Harnesses - Supreme Court Rules AI Art Not Copyrightable
27 snips
Mar 9, 2026 
Joey de Villa, an AI developer advocate with long-standing community ties, and Cory Doctorow, author and digital-rights activist, spar over AI’s legal and ethical frontiers. They tackle the Supreme Court ruling on AI art, government blacklists like the Anthropic ban, AI’s economic bubble and potential crash, pervasive data-broker breaches, and surveillance risks from everyday tech.
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Growth Stories Mask Weak Unit Economics In Tech
- AI companies' pursuit of growth stories (drones, Waymo, etc.) often masks poor unit economics and motivates risky expansion to sustain valuations.
- Doctorow links large stock awards like Sundar Pichai's to corporate pressure for new growth narratives.
OpenCola Crash Stories Led Cory To Join EFF
- Cory recounts OpenCola's San Francisco office era, VC pressure during the dot-com crash, and his move to EFF after founders were crammed.
- He describes sharing office space with EFF and how VC term-sheet maneuvers led him to quit and join activism.
Worker Autonomy Determines Whether AI Helps Or Hurts
- Worker autonomy is a prerequisite for productive human+AI collaboration; without it, automation privileges throughput over quality.
- Doctorow references historical Luddite concerns and modern radiologist workflows where AI can degrade conditions if quotas replace expert judgment.
