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Cory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lying
(www.thenerve.news)
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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Technology
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Sounds familiar. The proof-of-work blockchain scheme which was the fad a while ago is also often described as a solution in search of a problem.
I feel like block chain as a public ledger has found quite a few purposeful uses, and was a solution to a handful of problems most people rarely if ever encounter. Then fake money got involved
Yes, exactly.
Block chain would have been an amazing solution to most democratic vote validation processes.
Well no, because we don't have a problem that blockchain solves (better than open software, if it must be digital), and there are loads of problems that the blockchain doesn't solve. Like how am I supposed to vote with that thing under no coercion.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at. The blockchain is a good mechanism to maintain a source of truth that is inspectable and verifiable by anyone. It would only serve to certify that official counts can't be tampered with in certain ways.
But it doesn't replace the whole democratic voting process. It doesn't protect against coercive voting, for instance.
My point originally was that blockchain can be of use to us, but tech bros ruined its rep. Same with AI. I've been waiting for routers with ai-powered (really, just machine learning) firewalls that can adapt rules to environments. But instead of that, everyone is obsessed with generative stuff that isnt very good.
Yeah I hear you, but the 51% attack exists. Like if you use paper ballots, you're safer and it consumes less energy. There is just nothing better by using a blockchain, and paper ballots (for example) can be verified by anyone, the blockchain not so much.