The Tyranny of Optimization

Send us Fan MailDescription: If the predictive cage isn't a design flaw but a business model, what kind of economic system would produce AI that serves human flourishing instead of extraction? Nobel laureates Daron Acemoglu and Elinor Ostrom, Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, and surveillance capitalism theorist Shoshana Zuboff each offer a piece of the answer. The episode explores why market logic is structurally incompatible with healthy AI coexistence, what the commons framework offers as an alternative, and why the right question might not be "if not capitalism, then what?" but "what is the economy for?"