There’s an article in the New Yorker from June 10 entitled “Are We Doomed? Here’s how to think about it“. It’s really cute when academics tell people how to think because academics are — let’s say — a little odd. Of the highest relevance in this context is their absolute conviction that academics can solve any problem. It’s a specific and self-serving kind of intense optimism that we also see among liberals/Democrats — the experts will inevitably solve every problem.
The article revolves around a course at the University of Chicago co-taught by an astrophysicist and a “computational scientist and sociologist”. They bring in an expert for each putative source of doom, and there seems to be a lot of emphasis on coming up with a more informed weighing of these different sources of doom.
Importantly, they seem to see the means of doom (e.g., nuclear annihilation, climate change, asteroid strike, AI) as things that exist independently of human society. In some cases, like asteroid strike, that’s mostly true. In most cases, though, the real source of doom is either a caustic culture or two caustic cultures rubbing up against each other and thing the liberal mind is focused on is really the tool rather than the cause. (They do this with guns, too.) In all cases, the source of caustic culture is a group of elites who are floating so high above the rest of society that they believe they are independent of that society and no longer really care if it is destroyed. See, for example: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Jeffrey Bezos, Joe Biden.
The whole reason we have states engaging in “nuclear deterrence” with one another is because they are controlled by out-of-touch elites who believe that either A) civilization will be destroyed, but my money/power will protect me (perhaps via my various luxury vaults), or B) I would rather destroy the entire world than sacrifice my elite status. It’s the same for many of these other means of destruction. Should we do something about climate change? No, because doing something substantive would sacrifice the status of the elites and they’d rather die than lose their status. Should we prepare for a potential asteroid strike in a meaningful way? No, too expensive — that kind of expenditure would have to be borne by the elites, thus threatening their elite status.
Wherever there are elites, there is intense anxiety that the working class will rise up and take away their status. When the working class does manage to rise up, the elites never get over it; they will obsess about it forever, and in the cases where the revolution was kind, they will lie about it incessantly. See, for example, the Soviet Revolution, the New Deal, Cuba.
In 1860, white people still outnumbered enslaved Black people by a wide margin, even in the south. However, in the context of a plantation, the opposite was true, and it was all too easy to imagine those enslaved people rebelling. Southern whites developed complex systems to protect those plantation owners from the people they were enslaving. In every pro-communist revolution that has occurred, capitalists have sent troops to fight against the revolution; this is not typically because the capitalists care about the country in question, but rather because they fear a trend that will culminate in the revolution arriving at their own doorstep. In the modern-day corporation, the anxiety of the elites comes from a sneaking suspicion that they really don’t know anything about running the corporation. They are always worried that people are not giving 110% effort, and they are extremely concerned that the experts they employ are not working entirely for the benefit of the capitalist.
Traditionally, capitalists have dealt with this anxiety in the context of a corporation via complex procedures and bean counting — i.e., bureaucracy. Fans of capitalism love to rail against “central planning” and “bureaucracy”, and say that public institutions “should be run like a business” but there’s no more centrally planned, bureaucratic and outright authoritarian system than the modern American business. There’s a way out of this inefficient, labyrinthine bureaucracy, though — a solution that also completely solves the anxiety of the capitalist.
Artificial intelligence.
Yes, just replace everyone, from the guy who tightens the nuts on the thing, to the bookkeeper tracking all the beans with machines running artificial intelligence. You can tell it is intelligent because “intelligence” is right in the name. The word “artificial” means not human — so you don’t have to pay it. The important thing, though, from the capitalist perspective is that AI offers the possibility of direct control — no human intermediaries. At some point, the artificial intelligence will be so smart that it will be able to replicate itself, so you won’t even have to hire programmers. (A lot of corporations have already fired programmers and are trying to have AI do their jobs.) This is why “artificial intelligence” is so exciting for everyone right now.
In order to quash their anxiety, capitalists are willing to spend billions of dollars on AI. Just one corporation, Meta, expects to spend $10 billion this year. Google plans to spend $12 billion. The claimed motivations are fuzzy things like “increased revenue” and “cashing in on the boom” but it all comes down to getting rid of workers who have to be paid and, more importantly, have a will of their own. The elites are quite literally always trying to figure out how to re-implement slavery, and this implementation is superficially perfect since no humans are involved.
The obvious problem — the one my dad keeps bringing up — is that if corporations are no longer paying workers, then 99% of people would no longer have money with which to buy the things offered by those corporations. We talk about the “service economy” but even fast food companies are working toward a day when the restaurant will be run by robots. How can this work out?
Well, it cannot, but the real problem is that people don’t understand the true purpose of capitalism. In short, the purpose of capitalism — or the goal of the capitalist — is to not work. The goal of not working may be achieved through any means necessary, certainly this includes “hard work”, but it also includes sacrificing the lives of any other person, or every other person. Put another way, the purpose of capitalism is to elevate the capitalist class above human society; once this has been achieved, there is no need to continue capitalism — or human society. If capitalism ends humanity (with the exception of the capitalist class, which is above humanity) that is good; it is the intended climax of the story of capitalism. If capitalism did not end humanity, it would be like a bomb that never manifests its destiny (by exploding).
We are living in an unfortunate (or perhaps inevitable) intersection of amazingly dangerous technology and outlandishly elevated elites. Those elites are happy to use that amazing technology to further elevate themselves and also wipe out the rest of humanity. Which type of technology the elites use to wipe out the rest of humanity is a bit beside the point, but here are some examples (see if you can match each scenario to a media franchise):
- They can choose to drag their feet on climate change, and then hide in their luxury vaults while the rest of the world starves and burns.
- They can develop AI/robotic soldiers that give the elites direct control of the means of violence from the safety of their luxury vaults.
- They can use nuclear war to wipe out the rest of the world, while they hide in their luxury vaults.
- They can hide in their luxury vaults while the rest of the world is wiped out by some new plague.
(Incidentally, the robot-controlled warfare is already happening; e.g., in South Korea and Israel, they’re using automated machine gun turrets right now.)
The interesting thing is that they are planning to do all this. They just don’t know which of these events will the “The Event” — and they don’t care. They don’t feel like they’re part of humanity anymore and they are more than ready to sacrifice us all to whatever cosmic horror happens to pop up. They are more than willing to be that cosmic horror. In a society this advanced, there is but one doom, and it is the rich.
I strongly recommend that you read Douglas Rushkoff’s essay, “Survival of the Richest: The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind” (unfortunately, it is now behind a paywall, but it is worth it to find an archive of it or even create an account on Medium). And then, Rushkoff also has a book by the same name that is worth your time.