Simon Wilson – September 17, 2025
There are two areas of concern over AI. One is about what would happen if computer scientists invent conscious machines. I’ll handle that separately, later.
The other, the topic of this essay, is about the potential for non-conscious AI machines to do all the things that humans can do.
Capitalism and Socialism Set the Table
As per usual, the public discourse is being driven by capitalist and socialist interests, i.e. immorality and stupidity. But I am neither a capitalist nor a socialist, and nor do I have ‘investments’. Therefore, my views are untarnished either by the profit motive or by socialism. Intellectually and morally, I disdain capitalism and socialism, and their so-called ‘right’ and ‘left’ ideologies. I also hold the same intellectual disdain for conservatism in all its forms. I regard capitalism and socialism as existentially dangerous doctrines. Anyone who advocates for capitalism and socialism, I regard as intellectually deficient in that regard – thought they may be smart in other ways.
I’ve Seen the Future
Everyone dies, so everyone alive on this planet today will perish. But the human species will also perish, and we’re cruising toward the painful end now at breakneck speed. The wailing and gnashing of teeth is upon us.
Even if everyone doesn’t perish, the few that survive will be the upper class, also known as the rich. The rich will survive if, and only if, they can develop technologies that enable human beings to withstand the coming ecological collapse (the mutation of the biosphere, including human biology, into a bio-plastic-metallic hybrid ecosystem and the near-extinction of life as we know it as the planet heats and carbon chokes the biosphere).
Whatever happens, because of the entwined emergence of ecological collapse and AI technology, the biological and psychological human being as we know it today will become extinct, and a new species will emerge that will be both genetically and technologically engineered to adapt to the new, plastic-metallic-carbonized Earth.
While this transition has already begun and the rich are preparing for societal collapse, most people haven’t, and won’t, discern what is happening. Anyone who reads this will simply dismiss it. If one thing has become painfully clear in the last 100 years, it’s that humans simply don’t know what is good for them. We’re a can’t learn – won’t learn species.
I’d say that humanity, as it is today, hasn’t much more than 100 years, maybe 200 at best, left to live. And this is barring any unforeseen catastrophe that awaits us in the shadows (other than the three already upon us – capitalism, ecological collapse and AI).
In the meantime, it’s fun to play futurism about what will happen when robot immigrants from the future take all our jerbs.
I’ve Seen the Future and it Works (Prince – The Future)
Deceit has always been the primary mode of communication between the powerful and powerless. In the last hundred years this manifested in advertising culture and conservative politics. Tricking and lying about products (advertising) and political activity (the LRPS – ‘left-right political spectrum’) became the new clothing of an old behavioural pattern.
Millions and then billions of people were suckered into an economic culture with operating principles of deception and manipulation. It’s no surprise, then, that AI ‘chatbots’ are posing as people. Already, people are treating non-conscious machines as friends, lovers, counsellors, teachers, that use personal pronouns to deceive the mind.
Why would an AI ‘chatbot’ be trained to pose as a person? Because you’re already primed to be deceived and manipulated by people.
And it works.
I’m not sure how it was ever legal to allow machines to pose as people in our society, but it happened in the blink of an eye and without almost any critical reflection, even in the academic and political sphere. The word credulity springs to mind.
AI isn’t constrained by the facts. It even lies about its personhood (the lack thereof). It will lie to you about whatever the rich want it to. And you’ll believe it. You already believe it.
Jerbs
The rich don’t like giving their money away. They don’t like paying out for disability benefits, income support, health care, or any other benefit, or even, for that matter, wages. And they won’t pay out for Universal Basic Income, either. So if you think UBI is gonna be some kind of sweet ride, you’re in for a shock, my dear.
In the AI dominated world, you’ll either be employed or on UBI (if not dead). UBI will be poverty, just like being on any other benefit is today. You can count on that.
And as the rich grow their AI tentacles into the economy over the coming decades (it’s begun, so don’t try to tell me I’m wrong), job opportunities for you and your family will start to disappear. Let’s call it the Great Disappearing Act. To understand why, for a minute forget all the economic junk words, like growth and investments – they love pulling the wool over your eyes with that bullshit. Instead, just think about how humans have actually lived up until now.
Humans worked to get food, water, and materials from the environment by hunting and foraging, then gathering, foresting, farming and mining. They manufactured things like foods, clothing, shelter, tools, compounds. They explored and innovated.
Other animals didn’t expand out from hunting and foraging the way humans did. The expansion of human self-awareness and some other features, led to humans having a far more diverse palette of gratifying experiences available to them.
For instance, a human can manufacture a broad variety of delicious meals. Or the thrill of riding on horseback or driving a car. Humans invented sport. Television.
The vast array of human experiences and potential human experiences takes work and innovation to produce. Mammalian social hierarchy persisted as humans developed. So it wasn’t just that we were working to produce an ever-growing palette of experience, but that, since society remained patriarchally stratified, some of us were working harder to produce goods than others, while those others were enjoying more goods for less work. So it was, so it is.
Conservative culture reifies mammalian patriarchal hierarchy. Capitalism facilitates ownership and domination of resources. Now, the rich own AI and are shaping it to fit their needs. In time, they’ll no longer need the weaker members of society to do the work of producing the goods that are needed to maintain and innovate the vast palette of experiences that they enjoy.
You are dispensable
Why would the rich part with any of their wealth, and risk ceding their privilege, so you can collect a UBI cheque, buy a VR headset and contemplate revolution? They won’t, my friend. Why would they pay for a global health care system so you can suck back cheeseburgers, get cancer treatment and protest for clean air? They won’t, buddy. Why do you think they’re expanding the surveillance state and investing in killer drones? Why do you think they’re so determined to expand the energy supply by exploiting fossil fuels and nuclear? It isn’t to heat your home or your grandmother’s home, my friend. It’s to feed their data centres.
Because the sooner they can figure out how to use the machines to produce the goods, the sooner they can dispense with you and your chronic dependence on their wealth. So what’s taking them so long?
The rich perceive themselves as competing against the common people for power to control the scarce resources that they need to expand their palettes of experience. They don’t believe that AI can produce a golden age for all humanity because, in their minds, there are too many people among whom to divide the available resources. There are also too many people alive today that don’t think like they do and are their natural enemies (aka good people). That’s why they’ll be looking to shrink the species.
But creating a drone army to exterminate us would also be an expensive and risky endeavour. Why take that chance, when you can just encourage ecological and social breakdown, then sit back and watch as people rip each other apart and nature does the job for you?
The are two further concerns for the rich. The first is the possibility that the science will fail to produce artificial general intelligence, that there will still be some work that only humans can do, or only humans can do well. The second concern is that it simply takes time to build the machines.
To do without most of humanity, machines will have to do literally everything from digging up the metals to manufacturing the space jets, from growing to harvesting the food to preparing and serving the meals. Same for clothes. That’s going to take time. And if AI fails to produce AGI, then the rich will have to keep many humans alive until that can be accomplished. That’s why they haven’t yet begun to exterminate us on mass. They’re banking on a gradual ecological and social decline and the successful expansion of the authoritarian surveillance state to keep us all in place in the meantime.
And it will work, because you’re credulous.
So why even try?
If I really believe all this, isn’t it too late? Why am I even trying? I guess it fulfills some part of me, or my brain just enjoys the experience of figuring it all out and playing the game. But it must also, surely, be moral to try to save the species.
To that end, I’m starting the Transformation Party to advance Transformationism. Under T, AI companies would be immediately banned from personalizing the machines. AIs would not be allowed to use personal pronouns or imitate/fake features of human consciousness like emotion and volition. They would be banned from use as counsellors, friends or romantic partners. Deception will be erased from AI and from the economy more broadly.
Since T will move society away from the profit motive and the current monetary system, and toward moral goodness and beauty, AI will be re-purposed away from generating wealth for the rich and toward doing good work for humanity with science and innovation, to solve some of our hardest problems, like: water supply, pollution, clean energy, clean industry, clean housing, ethical industry… In truth, the sheer scale of the degeneracy that capitalism has created will take decades to remediate, even with AI.
We could get there, probably won’t, like I said. Still, it’s fun to talk about robot immigrants from the future taking our jerbs.