TheAltWorld AI Won’t Solve Humanity’s Problems Because Our Problems Aren’t Caused By Lack Of Intelligence
I hate it when people say humanity’s problems will be solved by “artificial superintelligence” as though all we need to fix the cruelty and abusiveness in our world is an AI that is smarter than a human.
Mark Zuckerberg voiced this talking point again today in a Twitter thread claiming that “superintelligence will create significant new opportunities for all people and businesses.” Last month he said the following in a statement titled “The Future is for Everyone — The Path to a Positive AI Future”:
“In the next few years, people will be able to use superintelligence beyond human capacity to create and discover extraordinary new things, build new businesses, express new ideas, learn new concepts, and advance our health and quality of life. As we get closer to this moment, it is important to develop a philosophy for how we can best use superintelligence to ensure it improves all of our lives, work, communities, freedom and safety.”
We believe superintelligence will create significant new opportunities for all people and businesses. Meta already serves billions of people at scale and helps hundreds of millions of businesses reach customers. Today we are starting the next major pillar of our business, Meta…
— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) September 28, 2026
These talking points annoy me because it’s an absolutely specious claim that artificial superintelligence will benefit everyone. Humanity’s problems are not caused by a lack of intelligence, our problems are caused by greedy plutocrats like Zuckerberg. It’s like a serial killer telling us we can stop serial killing by making serial killers smarter.
The argument hinges on the premise that humanity is suffering because we’re just not smart enough to come up with the right solutions, when in reality that hasn’t been the case for a very long time. Humanity has had the technology and resources to solve all its major problems for generations; we’ve just chosen to use our technology and resources making rich people richer instead.
We’ve long had the ability to end extreme poverty, to stop destroying our biosphere, to stop waging wars, to stop pillaging the global south at unfair prices, to stop imposing starvation sanctions, to end genocides, to remove money from politics, to institute true democracy, to create a well-informed electorate free from propaganda brainwashing, and to provide everyone with a decent standard of living. This hasn’t failed to happen due to our lack of superintelligence, it has failed to happen because the people with the power and the money actively stop it from happening.
No amount of added cleverness is going to make plutocrats less greedy, make warmongers less bloodthirsty, make politicians less corrupt, make empire managers less tyrannical, make imperial propagandists less deceitful and manipulative, or make capitalists less exploitative and ecocidal. Give them artificial superintelligence and they’ll just use it to grab up more money and control, just like they’re doing with the AI of the present day.
We can already see that AI is not making the world a better place. It’s already taking away jobs, facilitating war crimes and mass surveillance, poisoning art, and making people crazy and stupid. We’re already witnessing the results of more intelligent AI. Continuing to say we just need the AI to be more intelligent is like taking a pill to get healthy, having a terrible reaction to the medicine, and then deciding we just need to dramatically increase the dose.
Artificial superintelligence isn’t going to solve all our problems because our problems don’t arise from insufficient intelligence. We don’t need artificial superintelligence, we need basic human kindness. We need justice. We need ethics. No matter how much intelligence we add to the AI soup, it’s never going to magically add up to simple human morality. Which is what we’re actually going to need if we’re going to create a healthy world.
Video reading by Tim Foley:
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/ai-wont-solve-humanitys-problems
Ron
More about the control grid they are building everyday using, among other things people’s naivety and compliance to the most absurd demands and the fraudulent climate scare to do so
The Permission Grid: A Blueprint for a Permanent Slave Class
https://internationalman.com/articles/the-permission-grid-a-blueprint-for-a-permanent-slave-class/
It’s what they want and you know what? I think it’s what they’ll get. They’ll get it because there is a loss of agency amongst the populace. The pushback to this Orwellian nightmare is… in a word, pathetic.
MANUFACTURING THE CONSENSUS FIRST
No population accepts such a totalitarian enslavement permission system voluntarily. It has to be made to feel inevitable first. That’s what the fraudulent climate narrative has done — and the people building the tracking infrastructure have told you so, in their own documents.
The World Economic Forum presents three levers as a roadmap on its own website:
1. “Economic behaviour.” Raise costs until compliance becomes cheaper than resistance.
2. “Cognitive Awareness.” Raise the visibility of personal emissions until people believe a limit is normal.
3. “Social Norms.” Redefine what a “fair share” of emissions looks like, and set the acceptable levels for you.
And BAM, you’re a slave begging permission to take a hot shower, turn on air conditioning, heck even have air conditioning… or heating for that matter.
Nico R.
Concentrated power seems to be the obstacle that would also confront any attempt to put your proposed ethics into practice. You write that “the people with the power and the money actively stop it from happening”. What institutional change would you prioritise to prevent those same interests from controlling AI deployment? Kindness would still need a means of influencing those decisions.