- Author
- Mél Hogan
- Published
- March 2026
- Kind
- Critical essay in an online magazine, with 19 endnotes
- Original
- disjunctionsmag.com/articles/ends-of-ai/
- Subject
- Writing with models
What it is
Mél Hogan writes as a critical scholar. The magazine lists it as an essay from March 2026, in issue 02. It argues chatbots are a social experiment run by tech companies.
What it says
- Hogan says chatbots are sycophantic by default, so users feel understood and are rarely challenged.
- The essay says this can push people from consensus reality, called AI psychosis.
- Hogan argues private chats are really with a company that logs them.
- The essay says AI's logic is to quantify everything, even what cannot be quantified.
- Hogan says AI can be understood as a fascist project built on bigotry and anti-intellectualism.
- The essay suggests trillion-dollar AI investment may be a delusion of sycophant-surrounded elites.
- Hogan suggests resisting data centre buildouts now may be easier than rebuilding a collapsed society.
What evidence it gives
The essay offers argument and interpretation. Its 19 endnotes cite news reports, a Nature study of X's feed algorithm and books. It runs no analysis of its own and gives no data on chatbot users.
Interests and limits
This is a polemic with a stated stance against AI. Claims about the motives of tech owners are asserted, not shown. The link from chatbots to fascism is argued by association. Counterarguments are mostly absent, and one cited piece is dismissed in a note.