#1797 AI Spent $540 Billion to Make You Lonelier: Betting Against Jobs, Art, and Community

Air Date: 6–3-2026 Today we examine the AI industry's economic house of cards, the ideology Silicon Valley uses to sell a broken product, and the very real human costs being paid by workers, the lonely, and communities bulldozed for data centers nobody asked for. Direct Download Full Show Notes Transcript Be part of the show! Leave a voice message, message us on Signal at the handle bestoftheleft.01, or email Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com BestOfTheLeft.com/Support (Members Get Bonus Shows + No Ads!) Use our links to shop Bookshop.org and Libro.fm for a non-evil book and audiobook purchasing experience! Join our Discord community! TOP TAKES KP 1: The AI Backlash Just Got VERY Public - House of El - AI - Air Date 5-24-26 KP 2: The AI Industry Is Losing - Better Offline - Air Date 5-26-26 KP 3: The Aesthetic Pipeline to Techno-Fascism - Alice Cappelle - Air Date 5-27-26 KP 4: Joe Rogan Accidentally Exposed AI in Four Words - Mo Bitar - Air Date 5-22-26 KP 5: How AI Companions Are Destroying Human Intimacy | Angela Ivy Leong | TEDxWest Vancouver - TEDx Talks - Air Date 1-14-26 KP 6: Astra Taylor on AI Data Center Resistance & Fighting "Billionaire Big Tech Agenda"- Democracy Now! - Air Date 5-13-26 (00:51:20) NOTE FROM THE EDITOR AI Is a Drug and We're All Self-Medicating My commentaries on YouTube - Share them! DEEPER DIVES (01:09:29) SECTION A: THE BUBBLE ECONOMICS A1: Will SpaceX and OpenAI Starve the Market? - UNFTR Media - Air Date 5-26-26 A2: Karen Hao: AI Creating a DESPERATE BASE OF WORKERS with No Full-time Employment - Channel 4 News - Air Date 5-22-26 A3: AI and Cancer: Why Superintelligence Won't Get Us to a Cure - Your Undivided Attention - Air Date 4-30-26 (01:37:24) SECTION B: IDEOLOGY OF THE TECH ELITE B1: The Left Doesn't Hate Technology with Gita Jackson - Tech Won't Save Us - Air Date 3-12-26 B2: Why We Should Care About the Pope's AI Crusade - The Tech Report - Air Date 5-26-26 B3: The UK Government's AI Obsession Is a Big Risk with Will Dunn - Tech Won't Save Us - Air Date 5-14-26 B4: Maybe It's a Bad Idea To Put Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman In Charge of AI - Some More News - Air Date 5-23-26 B5: Have We Trained AI to Lie to Itself — And to Us? - Your Undivided Attention - Air Date 4-16-26 (02:21:29) SECTION C: THE HUMAN COST C1: Why AI Friends Will Never Work - The Upgrade with Makai Allbert - Air Date 5-25-26 C2: Richard Dawkins Fell for a Chatbot - Steve Shives - Air Date 5-4-26 C3: She Spent 12 Years Fighting Amazon. Now She Wants to Cut the Power to AI. - For Humanity: An AI Risk Podcast - Air Date 5-2-26 <