Edward Ongweso Jr.
Tech Writer & Podcaster
Writer on technology, finance, and labor and co-host of the This Machine Kills podcast, who argues the AI industry runs on manufactured fear — with companies like OpenAI weaponizing hype to secure deals rather than deliver value.
In his words
OpenAI, in pursuit of its first profits, uses fear of AI as a marketing strategy to secure partnerships and enterprise deals.
Biography
Edward Ongweso Jr. is a Brooklyn-based writer covering the intersection of technology, finance, and labor. A former staff writer at Motherboard, Vice’s technology desk, he has written for The Nation, Bloomberg, and his own newsletter The Tech Bubble, and co-hosts the podcast This Machine Kills, which describes itself as agitprop against innovation and capital.
The obscurant function of ‘AI’
Ongweso’s central argument is that “artificial intelligence” is as much a marketing frame as a technology — a phrase that obscures the low-paid data labor, the concentration of capital, and the labor-displacement agenda underneath. He is especially critical of what he calls the industry’s use of existential fear as a sales tactic: warnings about all-powerful future AI, he argues, function to make today’s unprofitable products seem indispensable and to lock in enterprise customers.
His analysis draws on political economy more than product reviews, situating the AI boom within a longer history of Silicon Valley bubbles and venture-capital incentives. Critics from the industry counter that the enterprise adoption he distrusts reflects genuine demand, and that his structural read leaves little room for the real, if uneven, gains users report.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/edward-ongweso-jr