An open letter to all those building AI in 2025
Face the nightmare before you buy into the dream
To all those building AI in 2025,
I understand that human beings have a natural tendency to create things, and that this creativity extends back tens of thousands of years. You, as a tool-builder, continue this ancient tradition. I congratulate you on that, and offer my respect for the hard work and passion you’ve put into building your skills.
I also understand that as we create new tools, the world shifts, because the new tools unlock new affordances, capabilities we previously didn’t imagine possible.
I also understand, however, that this process doesn’t make us fundamentally happy. We continue to build tools, and our generation has more technology than any other in human history, and yet we continue to suffer from deep anxiety, stress, burnout, depression, war, and - increasingly - a crisis of meaninglessness.
It seems unlikely that any tool will ever solve that. If anything, the proliferation of tech seems to contribute to a modern epidemic of confusion, surveillance, propaganda, disassociation and polarisation.
Furthermore, our technology doesn’t fundamentally make our lives easier from an economic standpoint. Rather, it mostly just makes our lives faster. Technology is an accelerant, not a relaxant. That’s because, whenever a new affordance is unlocked, we are pushed into weaponising it within the competitive landscape of capitalism. The new tool doesn’t bring new leisure. Rather, it simply becomes a new thing that each of us must now have to continue surviving in a - now intensified - market struggle against others.
Long gone are the days when the Internet was a fun novelty that we could choose to use or not. We don’t experience childlike joy each morning when we see it up and running, but we certainly panic if it’s down. That’s because the Internet has sunk into the foundations of our life as infrastructure, without which we are now disabled. It doesn’t guarantee security, or - in itself - make any of us joyful or empowered. Having the Internet, or electricity, or a smartphone, simply means each of us gets to fight another day, and to not be left behind by all the others trying to claw their way to illusory security in an ever-changing market.
All our technology doesn’t make us collectively thrive, relax, or live in abundance. If that were the case, we’d be the most peaceful and chilled out generation in history, without poverty or stress. But we all know that’s not the case.
Of course, mega-firms do like to spin a rosy tale about the new tools they sell. They say that each new round of technology brings us closer to utopia. Remember what they said about the Internet in the nineties? It was going to be like a giant popular uprising against the feudal lords of big business, a place where we could collectively make a peer-to-peer ‘global village’, fostering connection and so on.
That sounds so quaint now.
We've ended up with an inescapable complex of colossal Big Tech firms, with a revolving door between inhumanly rich founders and a self-congratulatory class of venture capitalists. They’re now fusing with the giants of Big Finance, the investment banks, private equity firms and mega-funds. They’re looked at with deep suspicion by the majority of the world’s population, but within their own bubble they see themselves as an inspiring class of doers who take the world forward, whether it wants to go or not.
Many within the tech sector live under a mythology that says their actions will liberate the world from toil through automation. Not only is that an illusion, but Big Tech business models are extractive towards humanity. Several years ago there were lively debates about the dangers of surveillance capitalism, the fact that the firms were creating honeypots to get people to hand over data. Now, in the all out arms-race to AI, those concerns are being pushed aside. The firms have hoarded data on thousands of years of human creativity - in the form of art, writing, film, invention, music, strategy, and so on - and handed it over to the software engineering class to use as raw material to build new AIs that will displace the creators of the raw material.
That’s where you come in.
I don’t doubt for a moment that working in an AI division right now is an exciting, even exhilarating, role. It’s probably like being an investment banker in the 1980s, with a wide set of creative possibilities before yourself to create new and exotic products within a heady, dynamic atmosphere. Perhaps you have strong connections with your colleagues, and feel that your skills are valued. You feel seen. You love going for drinks after work to talk about the latest NVIDIA gossip. You’re all in the same boat, working for firms that encourage you to think of yourselves as heroic agents leading humanity on a great adventure. Maybe you think you’re helping us all to get to the next level in the great game of human history.
In this, I am happy for you. Everyone has gifts which are meaningful to them, and which they use to form their identity and to express their creativity. You, as a tool-builder, are working with your gifts, and nobody can blame you for that.
But, I just want you to be aware that - in the context of our current world - your gifts will be weaponised, and you have a moral responsibility to not be naive about your own position in that great game of human history.
If you’re an AI engineer, people like Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman or Larry Ellison will want you to think that you’re part of some great tradition of unstoppable ‘creative destruction’, like the periodic wildfire that burns down a landscape to allow for new growth. Zuck wants you to move fast and break things, but in the end the fundamental purpose of AI is to serve the needs of capitalism in three ways:
Firstly, to give bosses and shareholders new automation technology that can be used to weaken the political power of their workforces by making labour increasingly redundant
Secondly, to give military generals new capabilities to fight over and secure territory for further commodification
Thirdly, to help numb out the broader population with streaming entertainment media, like AI-generated cat reels
The prime tendency of our economic system is growth and acceleration, and - within the mainstream - innovation is only allowed insofar as it furthers those primary goals. Put differently, if your innovation goes against growth and acceleration, it will be filtered out, or choked through lack of funding, which means it won’t get expressed. In short, you get to be creative, but only if you push your creativity into serving the interests of the billionaire class.
This is not a judgement of anyone who works in the tech sector. I understand that we’re all pushed towards selling ourselves within this competitive system, and a person entering the job market in 2025 must play the AI game to try to survive, because they see everyone else doing it. I also understand that you want to feel positive about what you’re doing when you do this.
But, I’d like you to not fall into the trap of those people who pioneered the Internet. They were full of optimism, but later cried tears at the fact that it’s now used for massive surveillance, data extraction and centralisation of power. So many of them are now very wealthy from those very processes, but still tell stories about how they naively hoped that somehow the tech wouldn’t be enlisted to enrich small groups of elites while empowering increasingly authoritarian regimes.
Those people were, in the nineties, in the same situation that you find yourself in now. You’re having fun developing AI, and you’re probably getting very rich off it, and you want to tell yourself, and others, some feel-good story about this.
Here’s a request. Please don’t.
Please don’t spin your fairytales about the wondrous things AI will do in future. Rather, it would be really refreshing if you’d just start from the assumption that by far the most likely outcome is for the tech to be used for massive enrichment and centralisation of power into an even smaller elite than before, with even more terrifying mechanisms of control at their disposal.
We don’t want to see you in some future Netflix documentary talking about how the promise of AI was betrayed blah blah. If you don’t start with an unrealistic perspective, you won’t be disillusioned when the obvious thing happens.
It’s not impossible for forms of good to come out of new technology, but your mantra should be: I assume this thing will turn out bad, but I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it doesn’t.
That might sound bleak, but at least it puts you in a more realistic frame of mind, and a more authentic moral position, so that the rest of us won’t have to be subjected to your crocodile tears in future.
Yours sincerely,
Brett
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Yes to all of that - but - you can't expect individuals or even groups of individuals to do anything about it, especially those working in the industry. Unfortunately, control and/or mediation has to be done by National Governments working together within International frameworks. We don't want to shackle creativity which leads to greater productivity but we can regulate to protect and share employment and enhance working conditions, and tax profits to redistribute to the roots of the Economy through provision of what have hitherto been thought of as tax burden jobs - caring for the sick and elderly, better education, healthcare, environmental improvements and law enforcement and justice. Much better to provide well paid useful work than social security handouts - and the alternative could be mass unemployment where eventually the have-nots outnumber the haves, and you get increasing crime and eventually revolution.
That was great, Scott! Thank for writing this.