The US dictionary Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2025 was “slop”, which it defines as “digital content of low quality that is produced, usually in quantity, by means of artificial intelligence”. The choice underlined the fact that while AI is being widely embraced, not least by corporate bosses keen to cut payroll costs, its downsides are also becoming obvious. In 2026, a reckoning with reality for AI represents a growing economic risk.
Ed Zitron, the foul-mouthed figurehead of AI scepticism, argues pretty convincingly that, as things stand, the “unit economics” of the entire industry – the cost of servicing the requests of a single customer against the price companies are able to charge them – just don’t add up. In typically colourful language, he calls them “dogshit”.
Revenues from AI are rising rapidly as more paying clients sign up but so far not by enough to cover the wild levels of investment under way: $400bn (£297bn) in 2025, with much more forecast in the next 12 months.
Another vehement sceptic, Cory Doctorow, argues: “These companies are not profitable. They can’t be profitable. They keep the lights on by soaking up hundreds of billions of dollars in other people’s money and then lighting it on fire.”
My dad never had the patience to write a single python program. Last year (2025) he wrote an entire android app that displays values from some hardware sensor graphically (with a neat animation) in like 1 week with the help of chatgpt. it does help people. it makes mistakes, but so do humans. the question is, is it more productive to do with than without? and i’d say, for some use-cases it’s more productive with than without.