iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 16/09/2026

There's lots of reasons to believe AI "hyperscalers" can never be profitable, and not just the gigantic expenditures and negative unit economics (the companies lose money on new customers and every use, and they lose more with each generation of their products): pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/e...

Tenniel's 'Red Queen's Race' engraving from Carroll's 'Through the Looking Glass.' It has been altered so that the Red Queen and Alice now have the heads of 1940s pulp robots. The image has been hand-tinted.

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 16/09/2026

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: pluralistic.net/2026/09/16/b...

pluralistic.net

Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no ads. Black type, white background. Privacy policy: we don't collect or retain any data at all ever period.

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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 16/09/2026

The industry strenuously denies this, of course. They insist that they are only days away from turning their balance sheets right side up. All they have to do is fix those unit economics, then they can make back the cost of producing their models by selling access to them.

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