When The Future Doesn’t Need Us

Today, the world is made of people. This gives people a tiny measure of leverage: factory workers can sabotage the machines and halt production, truck drivers can strike and halt the entire economy, the police can stand back and let a protest topple the government, the military can mutiny. This sets a limit to how much the powerful can abuse the powerless: no matter how powerful someone is, how much money they have, how many divisions they command, they are still embedded in a society. They need other people to survive, and to maintain their quality of life. And those people can, essentially, veto the political order by withdrawing their contribution to it. AI changes this. If AI works the factories, drives the trucks, does most of the white collar work, fights the wars, then humans become materially powerless. We lose one type of leverage against power. We become disempowered. When people talk about AI taking jobs, the main problems they worry about are poverty and meaning, but I…