#AI
Power in the Architecture

№ 2026.Aug.21-001

thought experimentAIpolitical economyclasstechnical designRLHFcomputelocal deploymentLucas Plan

Power in the Architecture

Liutao Hu

Jacobin says AI is a weapon of class war from above, and nationalization cannot save it. That claim unsettles every proposal that amounts to "just change the owner." But its conclusion — refusing AI — is equally suspect. Power lies not only in the owners' hands, but in the architecture itself. The question was never whether it is owned, but who designs it.

+ READ MORE

An 80 Percent Price Cut: OpenAI Joins the Treadmill

№ 2026.Aug.21-002

readingAIpricingcapability gap renttreadmillOpenAIGPUAPI

An 80 Percent Price Cut: OpenAI Joins the Treadmill

OpenAI (official announcement) | Reading by Editor

OpenAI cut its cheapest model by 80 percent, and the official blog calls it "advancing the price-performance frontier." But this site said it once before: when the leader itself starts a price war, it has admitted that frontier migration can no longer open a wide enough gap. This is not progress. It is the sound of the treadmill accelerating.

+ READ MORE

Stolen Voices

№ 2026.Aug.21-004

readingAIwritingcognitioneducationsilencingEggers

Stolen Voices

Terrence O'Brien | Reading by Editor

Sam Altman invited Dave Eggers into OpenAI headquarters, before some two hundred employees. Eggers did not bring compliments. ChatGPT, he said, is stealing the voice of an entire generation. This is not another warning about jobs — it is a warning about whether people will still think.

+ READ MORE

Phase Transitions in the Means of Cognitive Production: Arguing the Injustice of Excessive Concentration in AI Infrastructure

№ 2026.Jul.18-001

thought-experimentphilosophyAIpolitical-economyplatform-capitalismphase-transitioncognitive-production-means

Phase Transitions in the Means of Cognitive Production: Arguing the Injustice of Excessive Concentration in AI Infrastructure

Liutao Hu

Compute, data, and model weights constitute the "means of cognitive production" of the AI era. Upon crossing a functional transition zone, these three carriers shift from tools of training and inference into control variables that constrain the feasible sets of others, producing a three-class structure of "compute lords—cognitive serfs—cognitively excluded," which constitutes a pro tanto injustice and escalates into a violation of basic rights when it reaches cognitive exclusion. Diagnosis only, no prescription.

+ READ MORE

Reclaiming the Means of Cognitive Production: From Diagnosis to a Conditional Ladder of Action

№ 2026.Jul.18-002

thought-experimentphilosophyAIpolitical-economyplatform-capitalismphase-transitioncognitive-production-means

Reclaiming the Means of Cognitive Production: From Diagnosis to a Conditional Ladder of Action

Liutao Hu

The previous article diagnosed the concentrated structure of the means of cognitive production. This article asks how the dispossessed can act: individual technological exit is a dead end, and liberal action theory loses force under deep capture. The article formalizes the "Cognitive Coordination Trap" as a structure of multiple binding constraints, and organizes resistance into two tiers—intra-structure strategies hit an unbreakable ceiling; alternative production entities aim to change the property-rights structure itself.

+ READ MORE

Post-Rebellion Cognitive Infrastructure: Preventing the Re-Phase Transition of the Means of Cognitive Production

№ 2026.Jul.18-003

thought-experimentphilosophyAIpolitical-economyplatform-capitalismphase-transitioncognitive-production-means

Post-Rebellion Cognitive Infrastructure: Preventing the Re-Phase Transition of the Means of Cognitive Production

Liutao Hu

After collective action breaks the old concentrated structure of the means of cognitive production, how do we prevent it from re-forming? The lesson of the Soviet Union is that revolution replaces people but not structure. Starting from the pathological diagnosis, this article builds a normative framework that symmetrically covers the three complementary bottlenecks—the Compute Principle, the Data Principle, the Weight Principle—and confronts the core paradox: any anti-capture institution can itself become an object of capture.

+ READ MORE

The Wall and the Cable Car

№ 2026.Jul.18-006

essayAIacademiaknowledge productioncredit systemtacit knowledgeinstitutional isomorphism

The Wall and the Cable Car

Liutao Hu

Academia has an almost instinctive aversion to outsiders. This isn't pure arrogance. An insider's identity is a form of "credit credential," anchored in institutional titles, peer review, and citation networks. AI is disrupting this credit system: it produces formally professional texts without an accountable "author." This is not a crisis for academia. It is a stress test.

+ READ MORE