I keep seeing people hoping the AI bubble will pop, and I don’t think many of them have really thought through what they want afterward. I hear people say they want AI gone because they’re tired of dealing with it and miss a time that felt simpler. I understand that feeling, but the bubble is about the money and speculation around AI. If it bursts, that doesn’t mean the technology itself disappears. I don’t think people are going to get the future they imagine just by waiting for investors to lose money.

People talk as if a market crash will settle questions that only organizing can answer. It won’t write rules for AI, decide where data centers can be built, or give municipalities and residents control over the digital infrastructure they depend on. Sometimes watching people point to every little market drop feels like watching them wait for the rapture: each dip becomes another sign that collapse is finally around the corner. We could be learning about the issue, organizing in our municipalities, and pushing for the rules and shared infrastructure we actually need.

I think a lot of people have turned this into a fight against technology itself. I understand why automation scares people, but when companies replace workers because machines are cheaper, the problem is capitalism deciding who controls the tools and who gets the gains. We need social safety nets and real support for people whose jobs change, including access to other kinds of work. And as production becomes more automated, more of the means of production should be socialized. The people affected by these changes should share in the benefits and have power over how the technology is used.

That’s why I get so frustrated with the fearmongering and the anger that keeps people from asking what would actually help. Some of my friends seem to have an unhealthy aversion to AI, and it reminds me of people who leave Christianity but stay so focused on hating it that they can’t look at it clearly. That kind of reaction can cloud your judgment about what the real problem is. The biggest threat is capital deciding how these tools get deployed, whether that power sits with liberal capitalists in America or authoritarian state capitalists in China. I keep pushing back against the anti-AI stance because trying to destroy the technology doesn’t bring it under democratic control or make people’s lives better.

I don’t think we can send technology back in time in a way that makes these problems disappear. What I want is a different relationship with it. In the liberatory society I imagine, a solar-punk, social-ecological Eutopia, AI and other emerging technologies still exist, but communities and municipalities shape how they’re used and hold them accountable to the people living with the consequences. Data centers would be planned as part of shared digital infrastructure, in places where communities can support them sustainably, with real public power to set limits. I’d rather work toward that future than wait for the market to fall apart and hope it solves everything for us.