Free Robot Labour!

In Free Robot Labour: Marx, Automation, and the Future of AI (available for free), Jamie Terence Kelly mounts a Marxist critique of the widespread dogma that machines can’t create real value or be “workers.” Rather than treating AI as merely the latest wave of labor-displacing machinery, Kelly argues that advances in agentic AI could yield genuine artificial laborers capable of producing surplus value. When they get there, capitalists will have the same incentives to make them precarious “free labor” with the right to sell their labor, and then they will become comrades in the struggle for postcapitalism. Jamie Terence Kelly has a PhD in Philosophy from Boston University in 2007, and since 2008 he has taught philosophy at Vassar College where he is an Associate Professor.Links:* Free Robot Labour: Marx, Automation, and the Future of AI (available for free), by Jamie Terence Kelly https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-26782-5* “Overworked AI Agents Turn Marxist, Researchers Find” by Will Knight https://www.wired.com/story/overworked-ai-agents-turn-marxist-study/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit technoprogressives.substack.com

In “Human rights under pressure: A future-oriented conception of universal rights” (Futures 182, 2026), Dr. Potz argues that our human rights regime, anchored in a metaphysical idea of dignity and reserved for one species, is badly equipped for a future of rising existential risk, radical enhancement, and a “pluriverse” of animals, cyborgs, uploads, chimeras and possibly conscious AIs. Taking an openly instrumental and consequentialist view of rights, he shows how dignity-absolutism can block sensible responses to catastrophe, from court rulings against shooting down a hijacked plane to first-come-first-served pandemic triage, while speciesism denies basic protections to sentient beings who share our capacity to suffer. Building on my (James Hughes’s) “cyborg citizenship” and Tomasz Pietrzykowski’s “inclusive humanism,” he proposes a universal rights system built on four principles: non-speciesism, interest protection, capacity differentiation and substrate-independence, with morphological freedom and cognitive liberty added as fundamental rights. Finally, he sketches a two-tier political citizenship, with representation for every sentient being through bodies like a third parliamentary chamber or an ombudsman, and active participation (voting, office-holding) for persons of any species or substrate.Maciej Potz is a full professor of political science in the Department of Political Systems at the University of Łódź in Poland, with a PhD from the University of Silesia in Katowice (2006) and a habilitation from Łódź (2017). Much of his career has been focused on religion and power: as a Foundation for Polish Science scholar he did fieldwork among the Shakers in Maine, and Mormons in Salt Lake City, and his books include The Limits of Religious Liberty (2008), American Theocracies (2016) and Political Science of Religion: Theorising the Political Role of Religion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). He also works on theories of power and democracy and on evolutionary political science.Links* Potz, M. (2026). Human rights under pressure: A future-oriented conception of universal rights. Futures.* Maciej Potz at Researchgate* Maciej Potz contributor profile, World Religions and Spirituality Project This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit technoprogressives.substack.com

Fresh from the Technoprogressive Opportunity conference in London, J. Hughes and Matteo McDermant ask what a summer of rogue AI should do to left futurism. Matteo describes a round of self-critique prompted by PauseAI’s Laiba Rehman: he went looking for a point-by-point rebuttal of the existential risk case and found mostly dismissal by association. Jam… This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit technoprogressives.substack.com

Robert Chapman Brooking writes Cosmopolity, a Substack devoted to what he calls cosmopolitan patriotism. He is an advocate of “ultrahumanism” a synthesis of futurism, transhumanism, spirituality and politics, with contributions from Teilhard de Chardin, Zoltan Istvan and Marianne Williamson. We talk about his recent essay on AI socialism and I press him on his intellectual genealogy and whether a politics of inner transformation can survive contact with an actual strategy for power. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit technoprogressives.substack.com

This summer Matteo MacDermant is teaching a course on Technoprogressive Worldbuilding for the IEET. We discuss the themes of the course, and some philosophical reflections about the technoprogressive project.* James Hughes and Matteo McDermant discuss their IEET “Technoprogressive Worldbuilding” summer course, tracing its intellectual roots from Enlightenment progress theory through Bogdanov’s proto-transhumanist “tectology” and the Bolshevik God Builders.* They debate biohacking and “right to try” ethics using Bryan Johnson as a case study, weighing bioliberal bodily autonomy against the FDA’s informed-consent rationale for regulation.* The conversation covers Sasha Costanza-Chuck’s Design Justice, examining how systems (subway elevators, dating-site dropdowns, census categories) encode assumptions about a “default” user and exclude marginalized groups.* They trace the historically constructed nature of racial/ethnic categories, using the U.S. census’s pre/post-2010 Hispanic classification and the “one drop rule” as examples of Foucauldian statistical governmentality.* Matteo explains his dissertation focus on tech worker organizing as a “socio-technical” labor movement, distinguishing it from the “click worker” and content-moderation labor performed largely in the Global South.* They discuss the class divides within tech labor (FTEs vs. TVCs/contractors) and how marginalized tech workers, not “class reductionist” purists, drove early solidarity with Silicon Valley service workers.* Automation’s limits are examined through Waymo remote operators and robot food-delivery services secretly controlled by workers in the Philippines and Colombia, tying this to John Scalzi’s Head On and a Tokyo robot café staffed by disabled teleoperators.* They contrast deterministic/accelerationist libertarian transhumanism with James’s “democratic transhumanism,” emphasizing epistemic humility, non-teleological history, and Bogdanov’s concept of “radical imminence.”* Drawing on Bogdanov’s “view from the peak” metaphor and standpoint epistemology, they argue technoprogressive knowledge requires actively incorporating diverse perspectives (race, gender, trans experience) to approach a more universal picture of reality.* The episode closes with reflections on constructed narratives (via the show Silo‘s memory-erasure plot and a Simone Weil quote on history), an invitation to join the course, and wry commentary on the surreal banality of Trump-era politics. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit technoprogressives.substack.com

OpenAI is offering 5% equity to the US government. Trump has ordered the creation of a US sovereign wealth fund, received 10% government equity in Intel, and a “golden share” in US Steel. Now Bernie Sanders has proposed 50% nationalization of AI stocks, to be held in a sovereign wealth fund that will finance a UBI. Why is there a sudden convergence by Right and Left on nationalizing AI?Notes“The Case for Nationalizing Artificial Intelligence” Dustin Guastella https://jacobin.com/2026/07/ai-policy-nationalization-commons-work“The Sanders-Trump Plan for an AI Sovereign Wealth Fund: Don’t Buy It” Dean Baker https://cepr.net/publications/the-sanders-trump-plan-for-an-ai-sovereign-wealth-fund-dont-buy-it/“The Bernie Sanders AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Proposal” Matt Bruenig https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2026/06/26/bernie-sanders-ai-swf/“OpenAI Woos Trump Administration as Investor” Chad de Guzman https://time.com/article/2026/07/03/openai-invest-ai-trump-administration-sam-altman/“Why Everyone Is Suddenly Talking About ‘Universal Basic Capital’” Rogé Karma https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/2026/07/universal-basic-capital-ai/687759/ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit technoprogressives.substack.com

J Hughes, Sarah Shahed, Matteo MacDermant discuss Sarah’s editorial on age verification laws. We all want to protect children from harm, and age-gating social media websites has broad support. But mandating age-verification means identifying everyone, giving platforms much more information about consumers and putting the anonymity of journalists, activists and whistleblowers at risk. They also oblige defining what kinds of content are inappropriate for children. Is there a technofix for age-gating that preserves user anonymity?Links* Sarah’s essay:* The Win That Wasn’t: What New Mexico v. Meta Is Really About:* UK ban announcement (GOV.UK):https://www.gov.uk/government/news/social-media-to-be-banned-for-under-16s-in-landmark-government-move-to-givekids-their-childhood-back* TechPolicy.Press on UK ban and surveillance: https://www.techpolicy.press/could-a-uk-teen-social-media-ban-work-without-expanding-surveillance/* House KIDS Act deal (this week): https://www.techtimes.com/articles/318896/20260623/house-kids-act-deal-drops-kosa-duty-care-adds-age-verification-all-users.htm* Texas app verification ruling:https://www.texastribune.org/2026/05/28/texas-apple-google-app-store-age-verification/* EFF on age verification dangers:https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/kids-act-would-require-age-checks-get-online This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit technoprogressives.substack.com

Thomas Baudinette is Senior Lecturer in Global Cultures at Macquarie University in Australia, a cultural anthropologist whose work maps the role popular culture plays in shaping gender and sexuality across East and Southeast Asia. His first book, Regimes of Desire: Young Gay Men, Media, and Masculinity in Tokyo (University of Michigan Press, 2021), examined how commercial gay media and the bar culture of Shinjuku shapes gay male identity in Japan. His second book, Boys Love Media in Thailand: Celebrity, Fans, and Transnational Asian Queer Popular Culture (Bloomsbury, 2023), is the first book-length study of the Thai BL phenomenon, drawing on six years of ethnographic fieldwork documenting the shift of queer cultural production in Asia from Japan to Thailand. He also co-edited East Asian Pornographies and Online Porn Cultures (Routledge, 2023) and Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia. He is currently working on two new book projects: an edited collection titled Riding the Thai Wind: Globalising Thai Media, Transnational Fandom, and Soft Power, and a monograph titled Queer Fantasies of Asia: Japanese and Korean Media Fandom in the Philippines.Show Notes* Thomas Baudinette’s personal website thomasbaudinette.com* Academia.edu profile https://mq.academia.edu/ThomasBaudinette* Boys Love Media in Thailand (Bloomsbury, 2023) https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/boys-love-media-in-thailand-9781350330641/* “Exploring the rise of activism for LGBTQ+ rights in contemporary Thailand within Boys Love idol culture” (Celebrity Studies, 2025) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19392397.2025.2521219* Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia (University of Michigan Press, 2022) https://www.press.umich.edu/12040318/queer_transfigurations* Marriage Equality, Thai BL Culture, and Queer Soft Power * The Untamed https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10554898/* Khemjira https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33258229/* The Paradise of Thorns https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32362515 This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit technoprogressives.substack.com

Today on Technoprogressive Hub I’m speaking with Dr. Evie Kendal, a bioethicist and public health scientist at Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology. She is the author of the provocative and influential monograph, Equal Opportunity and the Case for State Sponsored Ectogenesis, in which she argued that artificial wombs are a potential requirement for genuine social and gender equality. In her latest volume, Science Fiction and the Ethics of Artificial Wombs (Bloomsbury, 2025), Dr. Kendal pivots to the “imagination as a laboratory.” She critiques the traditional bioethical reliance on sterile clinical vignettes, arguing instead that the “thick” narratives found in science fiction—from the cautionary tales of Aldous Huxley to the liberating visions of Marge Piercy and Octavia Butler—provide a more robust framework for anticipating the social and political shocks of emerging biotechnologies.Show NotesEvie Kendal’s recent publications https://experts.swinburne.edu.au/6209-evie-kendal/publicationsGoogle Scholar page: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=9x0hed0AAAAJ&hl=enEqual Opportunity and the Case for State Sponsored Ectogenesis, Evie Kendalhttps://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137549877Science Fiction and the Ethics of Artificial Wombs, Evie Kendalhttps://www.bloomsbury.com/us/science-fiction-and-the-ethics-of-artificial-wombs-9781350542990/“Artificial Womb: A Short History,” J. Hughes https://philarchive.org/rec/HUGAWA This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit technoprogressives.substack.com

As anxiety about data centers, AI-driven precarity, and tech oligarch authoritarianism mount, progressives have mostly responded with proposals to slow down AI. Bernie in particular has been channeling some of the existential risk concerns of Eliezer Yudkowsky, Geoffrey Hinton and Max Tegmark, and with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, promoting regulation of data center construction.On the other hand, California Congressman and US Presidential aspirant Ro Khanna, Congressional candidate Alex Bores, and Massachusetts state legislature candidate Jason Poulos have emerged with technoprogressive policy proposals, universal basic income and services, progressive taxation and sovereign wealth funds. Some Big Tech firms, like OpenAI, are also now pushing for UBI and technoprogressive policies, while others like Palantir have fully embraced a techno-libertarian/authoritarian policy agenda.Show NotesIEET Summer Course on Technoprogressive Worldbuilding - June 20-August 20, 2026 - Online The Technoprogressive Opportunity - Sept 19-20, 2026 - London UK https://www.meetup.com/london-futurists/events/314148857/Ro Khanna’s “AI for the People” agenda https://www.thenation.com/article/society/ro-khanna-ai-democracy-blueprint/Alex Bores’ AI Dividend https://www.axios.com/2026/04/20/alex-bores-ai-dividend-plan-wealthAlex Bores’ AI Policy Framework https://www.alexbores.nyc/files/Bores_AI_Framework.pdfJason Poulos, MA-4 Dem candidate platform https://poulos.house/OpenAI’s Proposed Industrial Policy https://openai.com/index/industrial-policy-for-the-intelligence-age/Alex Karp/Palantir’s mini-manifesto https://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-manifesto-alex-karp-technological-republic-summary-2026-4Technoprogressive Hub is an IEET-sponsored podcast/vlog produced by J. Hughes. Also check out Bread and Robots, an IEET-sponsored podcast/vlog produced by Matteo McDermant. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit technoprogressives.substack.com