THE SET-UP: The demand side of the economy is struggling. The housing market is stalled. The job market has dried-up. Inflation is hammering wage earners.. And American politics is a cluster-copulation of constant uncertainty.
But Wall Street is unfazed.
The S&P 500 has repeatedly hit new highs since artificial intelligence transitioned from plaything to panacea. In fact, it just reached a new all-time high thanks in no small part to the widespread belief AI will ultimately replace costly humans beings on nearly everybody’s balance sheet. A virtual Xanadu of profitability is just around the corner and the only thing CEOs have to fear is the fear of missing out.
The rest of us might have something more to fear than just “missing out”:
The argument for fear of AI appears to be:
1. AI scientists are trying to make entities that are smarter than current people.
2. If these entities are smarter than people, then they may become powerful.
3. That would be really bad, something greatly to be feared, an ‘existential risk.’
The first two steps are clearly true, but the last one is not. Why shouldn’t those who are the smartest become powerful?
That daunting exercise in logic was tweeted out by “eminent AI researcher” and Turing Award-winner Richard Sutton. Author David A. Price warns us that Sutton is not the only whiz-bang tech genius who thinks AI dominance is not only possible, it’s preferable.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Price introduces us to the “Cheerful Apocalyptics”—the not-so-gloomy doomsayers in the tech industry who are “untroubled by the possibility that AIs might eventually push humanity aside.” Instead, they, like Google co-founder Larry Page, welcome the possibility, arguing that “digital life is the natural and desirable next step” in “cosmic evolution.”
Before he happened upon Sutton’s iron laws of silicon superiority, Price thought the tech community fell into two camps:
[O]n one hand, optimists who believed it’s no problem to “align” AI models with human interests, and on the other, doomers who wanted to call a time-out before wayward superintelligent AIs exterminate us. Now here was this third type of person, asking, what’s the big deal, anyway?
Price sought out Sutton and Sutton elaborated:
“I don’t think there’s anything sacred about human DNA,” Sutton said. “There are many species—most of them go extinct eventually. We are the most interesting part of the universe right now. But might there come a time when we’re no longer the most interesting part? I can imagine that.”
And when that day comes? Goodbye, Homo sapiens?
“If it was really true that we were holding the universe back from being the best universe that it could, I think it would be OK.” OK, that is, for the AIs to rid the universe of us, one way or another.
Like many before him, Price turned to Jaron Lanier. He coined the phrase “virtual reality” back in the early days of Silicon Valley. From the late 70s through to the early 90s, the Valley still had room for idealistic, open source intellects like Lanier. The “world wide web” held the promise of being one-part global town square, one-part world-class research lab and the Great Library Of Alexandria all at once. That disappeared quickly when business-types realized they could put a dot-com on the end of a noun and have a meteoric IPO almost overnight.
Since then, Lanier has become more observer than participant. To wit, he wrote an essay for the New Yorker in March. In it, Lanier noted that he’d heard…
…a ‘crazy’ idea at AI conferences: that people who have children become excessively committed to the human species.
More frighteningly, he told Price…
…such sentiments were staples of conversation among AI researchers at dinners, parties and anyplace else they might get together.
A staple of conversation. Okay. And?
“There’s a feeling that people can’t be trusted on this topic because they are infested with a reprehensible mind virus, which causes them to favor people over AI when clearly what we should do is get out of the way.”
That’s very much in keeping with Sutton’s take. As is this…
We should get out of the way, that is, because it’s unjust to favor humans—and because consciousness in the universe will be superior if AIs supplant us.
Lanier offered this cold comfort:
“The number of people who hold that belief is small,” Lanier said, “but they happen to be positioned in stations of great influence. So it’s not something one can ignore.”.
One such person is Peter Thiel. His company Palantir is quickly insinuating itself into the US National Security state and it’s playing a significant role in surveilling and targeting migrants for ICE. It’s also targeting Gazans for Israel, and brutally so.
Back in June, Thiel appeared on Ross Douthat’s podcast for a wide-ranging discussion on the Anti-Christ and AI. It led to an infamous exchange that was summarized in a Tech Policy Press piece ominously titled “Digital Eugenics and the Extinction of Humanity”:
Thiel was asked whether he “would prefer the human race to endure” in the future. Thiel responded with an uncertain, “Uh —,” leading the interviewer, columnist Ross Douthat, to note with a hint of consternation, “You’re hesitating.” The rest of the exchange went:
Thiel: Well, I don’t know. I would — I would —
Douthat: This is a long hesitation!
Thiel: There’s so many questions implicit in this.
Douthat: Should the human race survive?
Thiel: Yes.
Douthat: OK.Immediately after this exchange, Thiel went on to say that he wants humanity to be radically transformed by technology to become immortal creatures fundamentally different from our current state.
Recall that Thiel’s protégé is current Vice President JD Vance. Also recall Lanier’s warning that the Cheerful Apocalyptics “happen to be positioned in stations of great influence. So it’s not something one can ignore.”
Frankly, they are impossible to ignore now that they’ve merged with Trump’s political machine. Trump’s overnight crypto empire is another source of unease … and not just because it is a perfect bribery machine. With Trump seemingly doing everything he can to tank the economy, it seems like those who control digital currencies are well-positioned to not just survive, but to dominate a post-crash world. And if the dollar should tank? Some may have the dollar’s replacement in their back pocket.
Yeah, that sounds bleak. But I am not a Cheerful Apocalyptic:
The whole school of thought can sometimes feel like the ultimate revenge fantasy of disaffected smart kids, for whom the triumph of their AI proxies amounts to sweet victory over lesser mortals. Lanier suggested to me that some people in elite AI circles seemingly embraced the ideas of the Cheerful Apocalyptics because they grew up identifying with the nonbiological villains in science fiction movies, such as those of the Terminator and Matrix franchises. “Even if the AIs in those movies are kind of evil, they’re superior, and from their perspective, people are just a nuisance to be gotten rid of.”
Sadly, Lanier is probably right. The future of mankind is in the hands of a group of disaffected, game-playing teenage boys. Sadder still, we all basically handed them control over reality itself … and it’s all just because we became enamored with sharing pictures of our food and ourselves. - jp
Magnificence beyond the Magnificent 7? Here’s the next generation of AI winners powering the stock market.
https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20251003146/magnificence-beyond-the-magnificent-7-heres-the-next-generation-of-ai-winners-powering-the-stock-market
AI is becoming the ‘magic fix’ as America places ‘one big bet’ on it not being a bubble, market veteran warns
https://fortune.com/2025/10/06/ai-boom-productivity-us-debt-immigration-inflation-stock-market-bubble/
OpenAI, Nvidia Fuel $1 Trillion AI Market With Web of Circular Deals
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-10-07/openai-s-nvidia-amd-deals-boost-1-trillion-ai-boom-with-circular-deals
New data show no AI jobs apocalypse—for now
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/new-data-show-no-ai-jobs-apocalypse-for-now/
Antichrist or Armageddon? Peter Thiel rethinks apocalypse from Silicon Valley.
https://baptistnews.com/article/antichrist-or-armageddon-peter-thiel-rethinks-apocalypse-from-silicon-valley/
The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession
https://www.wired.com/story/the-real-stakes-real-story-peter-thiels-antichrist-obsession/
I love your writing. Your sense of humor definitely makes reading the news much more tolerable. Thank you for your work. Btw I personally do not believe “the future of mankind is in the hands of [a] group of disaffected, game-playing teenage boys”. That may be what they think, but reality is thankfully much more complicated than they realize.