[dcel]

The Ayn Rand quote ("Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon") neatly distills precisely what worries me the most about an AI dominated future: that those in control of our destiny seem to have swallowed her misanthropic philosophy that (to paraphrase Rand again) "he is not a social animal".

Man, in fact, cannot survive without society. You don't have to be a communist to realise this. Until now the stratification of society has had certain unavoidable limits - everyone has a finite lifespan, everyone has an upper bound of intelligence and physical ability - as well as self imposed limits of regulation through states or unions. When kings and empires have come to dominate, revolutions have at least attempted to reform the social order, if not reset it. I fear that with AGI in the hands of the likes of Musk and Thiel we may soon be entering an age when men with Rand's worldview have the kind of power that makes them utterly untouchable and any chance of building a just and democratic future becomes impossible.