“Current AI systems are a death sentence for civic institutions.” That cheery pronouncement comes from two Boston University Law School professors, Woodrow Hartzog and Jessica Silbey, in the introduction to a new paper called, appropriately enough, How AI Destroys Institutions.

At risk, the authors write, are “institutions that structure public governance, rule of law, education, healthcare, journalism, and families.” AI acts as a kind of universal solvent, breaking down the bonds that hold together previously healthy structures: schools, hospitals, newspapers. And families, too.

Let’s talk about newspapers. Did you see the news – and just consider that phrase, how we take it for granted that “the news” is available to us, yet journalism itself is under a death sentence – anyway did you see the news that the Washington Post just laid off hundreds of journalists? As Drew Harwell put it:

People who nailed huge investigations, documented war zones, exposed horrific crimes, dropped all at once for failures they did not cause.

The Post, of course, is owned by Jeff Bezos, who through Amazon has made deep investments in AI and is planning more. (Example: CNBC reported on Jan. 29 that “Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI.”)

AI investment isn’t always so direct, though. Sometimes the money goes to the power structure propping up AI. And here again Bezos provides an example: he put $75 million into the “Melania” propaganda film. One of his former employees gave some context about that amount of money. From the New York Times (gift link, Jan 28, 2026), emphasis mine:

“This has to be the most expensive documentary ever made that didn’t involve music licensing,” said Ted Hope, who worked at Amazon from 2015 to 2020 and was instrumental in starting the company’s film division. “How can it not be equated with currying favor or an outright bribe? How can that not be the case?”

It sure seems like a bribe to me. And it’s particularly damning when viewed alongside the Post layoffs. $75 million is an amount of money that, as Karl Bode pointed out, “could have funded most independent newsrooms for literally decades.”

You may want news, in other words, but the Big Tech/AI/current regime power structure has other plans.

Similarly: you may want an education system, or affordable healthcare, but the oligarchs – forcing AI into those systems – have other plans. And you might value the power grid, or your water supply, or your family, but the oligarchs and their AI, etcetera.

AI is spreading where it doesn’t belong. This was my message on Techtonic this week, an hour-long survey of the news, from just the past couple of weeks, showing that “current AI systems are a death sentence” for the institutions we depend on.

You can listen to the show below:

• Episode page with lots of links and resources

• Podcast version of the episode

I should also point out that, while Amazon’s $75 million for “Melania” is galling when viewed alongside the Post layoffs, the $50 billion to be shoveled into the OpenAI bonfire is much, much bigger. (Fun fact, it’s actually 666 times bigger.)

(NOTE: If you’re feeling disappointed, angry, and/or nauseated by all of this, you can take one easy step to push back: Cancel your Amazon Prime account. While you’re at it, get rid of your Amazon Ring to make sure your front door doesn’t feed surveillance data to ICE.)

But Amazon is hardly alone in dumping billions into a hype-filled bubble. Mark Zuckerberg recently gave up on his metaverse idea. From Meta Lays Off Thousands of VR Workers as Zuckerberg’s Vision Fails (Futurism, Jan 18, 2026): “The division has lost over $77 billion since its inception in 2020.”

One oligarch wastes $77 billion, another throws $50 billion onto the bonfire – as the saying goes, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

All of which brings up the inevitable question: what could have been accomplished with that money instead?

Should we have schools, roads, hospitals, any sort of social safety net? Should we pay teachers better? Should we address the fact that one in five children in America doesn’t have enough food? No, the oligarchs say. None of those outcomes are acceptable. We should instead pump our stock prices just a bit more, just a tiny bit more, so that we can build one more wing onto our third-favorite mansion.

What a waste, what a grievous and colossal waste. Exploiting the world – to what end? Even the oligarchs themselves aren’t truly benefiting, as Elon Musk is figuring out:

Aww, poor guy. Perhaps he’s feeling low due to the public revelations of his appearances in the Epstein files . . . or the revelations in the NYT that his AI has created millions of sexualized images of women and children. Either way, becoming the world’s richest man – at the expense of the rest of us, in the 99.9% – hasn’t worked in his favor.

There’s more I could say, but there’s plenty already on the episode page. I’ll just leave you with this thought again: just think what we could accomplish if our treasure went toward creating good rather than growth at any cost.

If you want to support my writing, please join my Creative Good community, where we’re resisting the oligarchy together.

Until next time,

-mark

Mark Hurst, founder, Creative Good
Email: mark@creativegood.com
Podcast/radio show: techtonic.fm
Follow me on Bluesky or Mastodon