Akhil Puri

Our future is not yet written. Let's write it ourselves. #AI #UBI #Metacrisis #Robotics

31/ We will either learn to swim together, or we will sink together. There is no other way.

The time for passive hope is over. Support democratic renewal. Advocate for transnational coalitions. Redirect your skills to work on human and planetary flourishing.

30/ A world that supports a good life for all of humanity and the rest of life is possible, but it won't be handed to us. It must be built by us.

We must wake up and see the self-destructing trajectory we are on. We must ask what makes life worth living and realize that we are all in this together.

29/ And you might disagree with this solution altogether, but the solution is not the point. We can think of other ones. The key point is that the dangerous lie of UBI will persist and take us to our doom until democracy is strengthened and these incentives are realigned.

28/ This solution is, of course, at a very high level and would need to be sketched out in far more detail. But it isn’t impossible. The EU is already planning a 30 billion dollar investment in AI to catch up to the China and the US

27c/ Force the real debate: The energy footprint of AI is set to be massive—OpenAI wants to consume electricity equal to the whole of India. Can we afford this while in an ecological crisis?

27b/ Force cooperation: Control enough of the AI supply chain to force the US and China to the table to implement trustless, transparent cooperation mechanisms.

27/ This coalition could:

a. Drain power from incumbent players: A top AI/robotics engineer today is complicit in their own doom by working for players with misaligned incentives. This offers a purposeful alternative.

26/ For the second- imagine a coalition of the EU, Africa, the rest of the Americas, Asia, and Australia. It would have the spending power and talent to create a formidable, purposeful AI and robotics program.

25/ The first greatly blunts the impact of lobbying and takes away power from corrupt career politicians. This allows enacting of citizen-friendly policies at a nation state level.

24/Here is one possible way. It requires two pillars: strong, corruption-resistant national democracies (e.g., digital democracy & citizens’ assemblies), and a multinational democratic coalition with enough technological and economic power to act as a third force against the US-China duopoly.

23/ This same dynamic paralyzes action at a nation-state level. If you as a country choose to be peaceful, but your neighbour is violent then you have no option but to militarise or develop AI and robotics even while sacrificing your population. This is the deadlock we must break.

22/ The situation is compounded by the fact that a small but influential percentage of those upholding the status quo are not just constrained by game theory; they are individuals with low levels of empathy and self-centered worldviews—often shaped by trauma or genetic predisposition.

21/ This is what leads to people building bunkers and making plans to escape to Mars instead of maximizing chances of survival here on Earth

20/ Again, this doesn't require evil. It's game theory. If you are willing to give up power to ensure planetary flourishing, but you think others won't, you are going to be too afraid to act alone. You would weaken your chances of survival for nothing.

19/ This would require the powerful to give up some of their advantage. Some, like billionaires @mackenziescott.bsky.social and others who have signed the Giving Pledge, recognize this and are working towards it. But the others would rather let people perish instead of giving up their power.

18/ Think massive investments in green tech and safe nuclear energy. An economy that focuses on human and planetary flourishing instead of profit maximisation. Tech that works for people and not against them.

17/ Think life configured around public transportation, walking, and cycling instead of cars. Think tool libraries and equipment sharing instead of each person buying everything. Think healthcare focused on well-being instead of making money off sick people.

16/ The planet, under our current wasteful and unequal infrastructure, cannot support 8.2 billion people. A good life for all is physically possible. But it requires a massive reorganisation of society.

15/ The result— climate change, micro-plastics everywhere (including our brains), soil degradation compromising food production capability, water scarcity, plateauing/declining oil production that will lead to an energy crisis in the next decade, and more

14/ We have been doing this for decades now. But the effects had not been as evident because the Earth is massive. It had an excess of resources and an ecosystem that was self-correcting to an extent. Now we have ploughed through the surplus and gone beyond the limits of self-correction.

13/ The game-theoretic incentive for these companies to let people perish is ecological. We are in a period of ecological overshoot—consuming resources faster than Earth can replenish.

12/ That we depend on relationships to give life its richness, meaning and beauty. This blindness leads them to believe that power is the only truth worth worshipping.

11/ It requires people to misunderstand Darwin and fail to see that we form an interconnected web of life. That survival of the fittest in our context means cooperation, not competition.

10/ Unable to mount effective resistance, the masses made redundant face a grim fate. This doesn't require the powerful to be evil. It just requires game theory and a worldview that says, "The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must."

9/ If a small resistance movement somehow forms, it can be crushed ruthlessly with drones or armed robots. The British Empire had less than 100,000 troops controlling 350 million Indians. The ratio of controller to controlled is about to become vastly more efficient.

8/ Some say, "But the powerful need consumers!" This is a relic of an old paradigm. Why do you need human consumers when you have robots to harvest resources and serve your every need directly? The masses become economically redundant.

7c/ AI-driven surveillance makes it impossible for those who do understand to coordinate. They are silenced by algorithms, discredited by bot armies, or simply imprisoned.

7/ Once AI and robotics become advanced enough, this power balance shatters.

a. AI and robotics driven automation will make most human labour obsolete.
b. AI-driven misinformation makes it impossible for the public to understand what is happening.

6/ The power of the masses comes from three things: the ability to protest/overthrow governments, to boycott companies, and the fact that the masses are needed to perform the labour that gives corporations their power.