Cory Doctorow Says the AI Bubble Will Burst, and Bosses Will Regret Firing Their Staff

Key points

• Cory Doctorow, science fiction author and tech critic, is visiting Australia to argue that humans will reclaim jobs lost to AI tools.
• Doctorow warns that when AI investment cools, companies that replaced staff will struggle to rebuild those skills for years.
• He also cautions creative workers not to rely on copyright law alone to protect their work from AI companies.
• Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledged, one week before this report, to tighten rules on AI companies that refuse to pay for the content they train on.

Cory Doctorow has a habit of saying things politely that turn out to be sharp criticism. His latest: the executives who replaced their teams with AI tools are going to have a very awkward moment when the bill comes due.

What is Doctorow actually predicting?

He thinks the current wave of AI investment is a bubble, and bubbles burst. When this one does, companies that cut staff in favour of AI tools, software that can draft emails, generate images, write code and summarise documents, will find that the human skills they discarded do not simply walk back in through the front door.

"It takes a really long time" to rebuild lost expertise, Doctorow says. A junior copywriter who was shown the door in 2024 has moved on. The institutional knowledge walked out with them. That is not a problem you fix with a subscription.

Doctorow is currently on an Australian tour, spreading the message first reported by The Guardian, that workers in creative industries especially need to take stock of where they stand.

Should creative workers just fight back through copyright law?

Not entirely, Doctorow says, and this is where his argument gets more complicated.

Copyright, the legal right that stops others from copying your original work without permission, is the tool most writers, illustrators and musicians have reached for when AI companies train their models on scraped content. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese leaned into exactly that instinct just last week, promising stronger protections against AI companies that refuse to pay for the material they use.

Doctorow's warning is that copyright is a slow, expensive and uncertain weapon. Courts are still working out the rules. By the time a case settles, the damage may already be done.

His advice is broader: think about collective action, think about regulation, and do not assume that winning a lawsuit will make the underlying problem go away.

What does this mean for ordinary workers?

If you have watched colleagues replaced by an AI tool at work, Doctorow's argument is essentially: hold on, the pendulum swings back. But it does not swing back automatically.

His tour is partly a call for workers, unions and policymakers to push actively for rules that protect human labour before the bubble pops, not after.

For Australian audiences specifically, the timing is pointed. The government has signalled it wants AI companies to pay their way. Whether that translates into real policy is a separate question, and Doctorow is plainly urging people not to wait and find out.

Common questions

What is an AI bubble, in plain terms?

An AI bubble means investors are currently pouring far more money into AI companies than those companies can justify with actual profits. When confidence fades, investment dries up fast, and firms that built their business plans around cheap AI tools find themselves exposed.

Does Australian copyright law actually protect creators from AI training?

Not clearly, not yet. Australian law, like most countries' law, has not fully settled whether training an AI model on copyrighted text or images counts as infringement. The Albanese government's recent pledge suggests reform is coming, but no new rules are in force today.