This reading note uses Sami Mahroum’s 'AI and the end of time' (2026) Project Syndicate article, published in February 2026, as a case study in the rhetoric of contemporary technology discourse. Mahroum argues that AI disrupts capitalism’s historical reliance on time as the organizing principle of labor, claiming that human time has become functionally abundant and that traditional categories of work and value are dissolving. The text identifies three core argumentative steps (1) the claim that AI breaks the link between time and value, framed through cause‑effect and trend arguments; (2) the assertion that acceleration is the most efficient response, supported by examples and analogies; and (3) the insistence that acceleration is imperative, grounded in practical reasoning and threat appeals. The analysis shows how these arguments rely on epideictic rhetoric, producing inevitability, urgency and simplified binaries. It also highlights recurring fallacies, namely false dilemmas, weak analogies and spurious generalizations, and proposes future research on how technological inevitability narratives shape public policy.

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• Economics and Business - Social Sciences
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