Sam Shorey

Are you living near a data center? Our interactive map shows where construction is skyrocketing. Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta are rapidly building data centers amid the AI boom. Our interactive map shows where they are.

A really cool example of investigative reporting from @businessinsider.com, mapping (the often undisclosed) locations of US data centers by tracking permits for the diesel back-up generators they use: www.businessinsider.com/data-center-...

Alysa Liu telling 60 Minutes “I love struggling, it makes me feel alive” is a legit revolutionary statement from a Bay Area native in a time when copious amounts of time and resources are being put toward convincing us to opt out of experiencing struggle, friction and self-actualization

Yeah, there's a lot of slippage between "you must pay attention to these technologies" and "you must submit to the current political economy of these technologies," and those are not the same thing at all

It Turns Out Waymos Are Being Controlled by Workers in the Philippines During a Congressional hearing, Waymo's chief safety officer, Mauricio Peña, was grilled over the company's reliance on overseas workers.

Once again, it turns out “fully autonomous” means “a guy in the Philippines.”

great news from this semester's monologue assignment: the Fight Club cohort went full-on 1984! The revolution is near.

The real appeal of AI is that it’s a way to make it even harder for people to use basic services that might cost a company some money. None of the people promoting this will ever have to go through an AI agent for anything, especially not healthcare.

“We don't know about the safety of this technology, especially when it comes to young people interacting with it. We don't know if we can trust this technology to make decisions about our health. We don't know if this technology is going to consolidate data to the point where governments and corporations can surveil American citizens,” Shorey said. “In a lot of ways, the states have been little laboratories for figuring out what this can look like? In what ways do we encourage businesses and encourage development and progress while also protecting basic human rights of the people who live here?”

the Executive Order overriding AI regulations from the states will make Americans vulnerable to technological harm. On Austin's @kvue.bsky.social this week: www.kvue.com/article/tech...

Scottish Artist Robert Montgomery Brings His Concrete Poetry Back to the Canvas In His New Show Robert Montgomery looks to the birth of the Modernist experiment in his latest artistic experiment.

love Jenny Holzer forever! But, Robert Montgomery created "the people you love become ghosts inside you" news.artnet.com/partner-cont...

The AFL-CIO should start throwing some money towards labor journalism. If it was done right (i.e. with them accepting that journalists must have full editorial control over what’s published, whether or not union leaders like what they have to say) it could really have such a hugely positive impact

Ghost Workers in the AI Machine: U.S. Data Workers Speak Out About Big Tech's Exploitation - TechEquity Collaborative Alphabet Workers Union-CWA and TechEquity interviewed U.S. data workers to shed light on the working conditions of the people powering AI.

25% of U.S. data workers at AI companies (valued at 5 trillion+ dollars) are paid so little they have to rely on public assistance programs like SNAP. #AICorporateWelfare

via the new report from @techequity.bsky.social and CWA: techequity.us/2025/09/30/g...

man, it's not looking good for the billionaires. All the public speaking students who used to recite the Wolf of Wall Street monologue are now picking Fight Club.

Screen shot: "I am descended from people who, in their lifetime, fought with all their might for the destruction of chattel slavery in this country. And they never saw it. They never saw it. In my personal belief system, they died in defeat, in darkness. So I guess the privilege that I draw out of this, the honor that I draw out of this, is not that things will necessarily be better in my lifetime, but that I will make the contribution that I am supposed to make."

the conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein, two friends who fundamentally disagree, is a remarkable read. Ta-Nehisi's clarity has been carrying me after weeks of feeling defeated by the techno-political moment.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/o...

first day of the semester and in the words of Kerri Colby: I'm here to wake it up!

thank you so much, Arturo! It's wonderful that it resonated with someone with such a keen eye for change in the creative industries.

*presses play on Phil Collins - In the Air Tonight*

"How to live? Be soft, get by, go slow, open up, find others, try to be kind, funny if you have it in you. Get things done, think justly, create, learn your corner as best you can."

Lisa Henderson, Every Queer Thing We Know

Promotional graphic for fireside stacks

Headlines say AI is replacing workers, but beneath the headlines is a more sinister truth—they're being reorganized, outsourced, and devalued to make automation possible.

@samshorey.bsky.social lays it all out in the latest #FiresideStacks 🔥 www.firesidestacks.com/p/patchwork-...

Screen shot of PDF "Don't Be a Drone: Tips for Better Reporting on AI in Essential Work Sectors." Tip 1 is "Don't let executives be the only voice in your story"

Journalists are doing such important work to inform and educate the public about innovation. My co-author (a journalism undergrad at UT!) created "Don't Be A Drone," a 1-sheet that turns our findings into actionable tips for reporting: www.bit.ly/ReportingOnAI

why does this matter? because execs are predictably pro-tech while on-the-ground workers are the people with the most direct experience with AI technology and its limitations! Without the voice of workers, news stories become another source of technology hype.

Out now in the AI Hype special issue in Digital Journalism, "Automating Essential Work:"
📰 10 years of news stories
📈 tech company execs become sources when the industry shifts from traditional automation to robots
👷🏻‍♀️ 0 quotes from on-the-ground workers

doi.org/10.1080/2167...

What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? I’m going to give a sideways answer to this, which is that the venture capital business model needs to be understood as requiring hype. You can go back to the Netscape IPO, and that was the proof point that made venture capital the financial lifeblood of the tech industry. Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto. It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.

Stand by this: www.politico.com/newsletters/...

[T]he public sector should not be a testing ground for tools that haven’t been evaluated, tested, and established as truly beneficial.

NEW 📰: AI automation is making government jobs more stressful & error-prone, hurting workers & constituents.

@samshorey.bsky.social offers a scan of the existing landscape of AI implementation from across the country & the true impact on workers & efficiency. rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...

I was reminded this week that (alongside the agonies of the OBBB) the almost unanimous decision to remove the preemptive ban on AI regulation was the result of real mobilization — and is a clear sign to lawmakers that the American public doesn't want to give a blank check to big tech.

This hands unchecked power to tech firms aligned with Trump, silencing local oversight and boosting political manipulation. This will impact our elections and explode the amount of misinformation reaching Americans.

This could include common-sense protections like:
❌ the recently-passed Texas law that forbids the use of AI as the sole decision-maker in healthcare determinations.
❌ the proposed California law that requires the state to clearly identify when AI is being used to interact with constituents.

The state-level has been the most important place for prototyping laws that aim to ensure that AI is actually used to make the lives of Americans better—not just make tech companies richer.

Why does this matter? Because, even though there have been multiple executive orders on AI from the last three presidential administrations, there is no comprehensive federal law governing how AI can be used on Americans.

The current version of the One Big Beautiful Bill still includes a provision that prohibits any state from regulating AI for the next ten years if they want access to the $500 million allocated for AI infrastructure.

every one of us is all we need 💛

don’t fetishize an identity of “writer.” To me, what you and I are doing is the same work. My teaching is the same work. When I give a talk at a university, it’s the same thing. How do you characterize that work? A kind of sincerity, of figuring this out. I think that’s it. A Buddhist sutra says to engage the phenomena of the world with earnestness. I’ve always valued that.

this interview with Ocean Vuong pulled and pulled at my heart-strings. And the comments section too (a rarity) sharing in the loneliness and grief of class mobility. whew. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/m...