AI and the Collapse of Capitalism

The essay argues that capitalism’s ecological destruction may not end in a fairer society built around shared resources. Instead, it warns that technology could enable a more concentrated and coercive order in which automated systems manage production, resource extraction, and distribution for a small elite. This outcome would not require artificial general intelligence or machines capable of doing every job. The author says it would be enough for AI and related systems to make elites sufficiently self-sufficient that they no longer depend on mass participation in the capitalist economy.

The essay interprets heavy investment in AI, despite uncertain economic returns, as part of this pursuit of control. It also argues that dramatic promises about “godlike” AI distract from the more immediate danger: technology helping elites preserve their access to resources while limiting or abandoning the rest of humanity. The author imagines people either subjected to technological control or exposed to worsening environmental disasters while the wealthy retreat to protected enclaves; even without mass death, dependence on AI-designed media and social systems would make life intolerably constrained. The proposed response is not simply socialist reform but a broad rejection of AI and a move toward technological regression, simpler lives, and less dependence on complex systems. The essay warns that accepting limited reforms could leave the underlying concentration of technological power intact.