This past month saw multiple developments that may one day be regarded as inflection points, potentially marking the end of an age and the processes that defined it. At one level, as we shall see, this occurred with the closure of Amazon Mechanical Turk and the fading promise of the gig economy. At another, it has emerged in the world of finance. As many have noted, American bond yields — the effective price the US government pays to borrow money — surged to record highs this month. The spike prompted frantic interventions from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, but these efforts failed to contain the situation for more than a few hours, raising the prospect of financial volatility entering uncharted territory.

The significance of this development cannot be overstated. A sustained escalation in bond yields could threaten the stability of the US economy — and, by extension, the global dollar system as a whole. Analysts have warned that an unravelling of the bond market could trigger a series of cascading financial crises, with consequences that could ultimately engulf the global economy.

This is particularly dangerous for Silicon Valley. Such a scenario would wreak havoc on the stock market, sending valuations plunging and threatening the financial lifeblood of the industry. Indeed, by late July, technology stocks were already tumbling amid concerns over misguided capital allocation in the AI sector. A major $45 billion hedge fund even collapsed after losing most of its value in the fallout from the market correction. The situation became serious enough that the European Central Bank subsequently released an official brief warning investors that the current dynamics of the AI industry bear strong parallels to the dot-com bubble and should therefore be treated with serious caution. Adding the chaos of the bond markets to an already fragile situation could well be enough to push things over the edge.

In the midst of these stormy tides, however, the future of AI continues to shape the strategic calculus of multilateral politics. Last month, China inaugurated the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), a new intergovernmental body explicitly designed to bring emerging-market countries together to foster collaboration on AI, pool resources, and establish global standards for the evolving technological paradigm. Washington, viewing the initiative as a major threat, is hardening its stance. A recently leaked draft letter reportedly showed that the US is planning to issue an ultimatum to its allies: participation in the Chinese-led effort could result in exclusion from the American coalition. In other words, countries may soon be forced to choose sides in the AI race.

Whether such bullying will succeed remains to be seen, but given that the US continues to threaten and tariff its allies, and damage their economies with its military adventurism, it is safe to say that its authority on the global stage is not what it once was.

The same is true of the international institutions that have served as guardians of US hegemony for more than half a century: the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Both bodies released new reports this month, offering their own prognostications on the global economy and the place of AI within it. The IMF, for instance, hailed AI investment as an engine of economic growth amid a difficult period, with international trade reeling from the supply shocks generated by multiple wars. Yet this framing betrays an obvious bias — one that ignores the political context of the conflicts being waged, as well as the many legitimate concerns surrounding the irresponsible speculative frenzy that AI has fuelled.

Similarly, the World Bank went a step further in its report, arguing that poorer countries should adapt existing AI tools to their own needs rather than pursue the costly ambition of building frontier models of their own. Again, this may sound like pragmatism, but it fails to reckon with the political realities and longer-term stakes of technological change. As, of all people, the Pope observed in a recent speech, “the rapid development of artificial intelligence risks creating new forms of technological dependence … that could become another vehicle for ideological or economic colonialism.” Fortunately, this is a realization that is becoming increasingly widespread, and resistance to the mainstream narratives surrounding AI is growing rapidly.

Finally, in our second seemingly epochal shift in August, there were a number of reports signalling a deepening corrosion at the heart of the gig economy. Surveys from the US, for instance, found that gig workers were increasingly unable to support themselves on the wages from this work alone, often requiring government assistance to meet their basic needs. This is particularly worrying given the growing number of people being forced into gig work as economic hardship continues to worsen. Indeed, according to one study’s projections, by next year nearly half of the workforce across OECD countries will be participating in the gig economy in some form. Yet this surge in the supply of gig labour risks driving wages down further and accelerating the deterioration of working conditions. This spiralling dynamic is already playing out across the Global South, where the expansion of gig work has struggled to mitigate the vast unemployment crises taking hold across these regions.

In a striking coincidence, this month also saw Amazon announce the closure of its micro-work platform, Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). This really signals the end of an era, for AMT pioneered the other predominant form of the gig economy: home-based data annotation and other micro-tasks that — over the years — provided the labour force that ultimately made today’s AI systems possible. Yet it is precisely these systems that are now rendering such work obsolete. Reports indicate that the use of AI had become pervasive on AMT, contributing to the platform’s declining viability as a business model.

These developments further cloud an already uncertain economic horizon. For all its many faults, the gig economy at least served as a bulwark against the complete destitution of livelihoods brought on by economic stagnation. It now appears increasingly unable to perform this function, just as more and more people are being driven towards it out of grim necessity. This is a reality that is likely to have a profound bearing on the future of politics around the world.

The Sins & Synergies Lounge

Read the latest in the AI Hype series on the shrinking representational space for women online brought on by the saturation of hyperreal AI women and the chilling effects of Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery.

Interact with this chilling project that visualizes the AI kill chain, which represents the sweeping transformation of war by flawed technologies.

In a growing site of tension over who gets to define culture, check out this paper on the potentials and limits of a growing genre of Hollywood films that take on the dystopian futures created by Silicon Valley corporations.

Don’t miss this important investigation of the Palantir-World Food Programme partnership that manages the data of the world’s largest humanitarian supply chain.

Tune into this excellent breakdown of the Pause AI movement and the factions within the movement against AI.

Finally, put Celia Rekap’s latest book “The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud”on your reading list. Watch this conversation on the book that draws critical connections between her earlier work and the book.