Is this it?

I’ve been meaning to write for some time, but I’ve always been too nervous and hesitant to post anything. Too indecisive, too perfectionist. I’m very drunk right now so I figured maybe I can get my words out. Hopefully its coherent.

I want to start with a little bit of background. My name is Leon, I’m a senior at UC Berkeley. My time in school is rapidly coming to an end. I have a career path lined up, a good one, that I am sucked towards, and many younger people want to work in. I’m grateful. But I can’t shake the feeling that it isn’t enough for me.

I’ve spent the past few months thinking about the world. Thinking about what the world will be like in the future. In my arrogance I thought that by thinking hard, I could get to some objective truth about what I should do going forward. What I should do with my life, yknow. In that way that we latch onto artificial goals, investing ourselves into them, thinking that they matter and have significance in our lives, I poured myself into thinking about what the future would look like.

What have I concluded? I’m not sure. Simultaneously many things, and very little.

To use another’s words (although I think from a different perspective), I think the world is in peril. Maybe this is obvious to everyone, but I think we might be unable to appreciate the scope of the danger.

Artificial intelligence improves every day. Every day, we come closer to replacing ourselves. Certainly, I think there is risk in the ways that all the ai safety gurus talk about it -- misalignment and rogue AI killing us all (terminator-style), or malicious entities getting their hands on it and unleashing unforeseen devastation on the world through killer robots (see: autonomous drone warfare), cyberattacks, bioweapons. Certainly these are frightening -- with something like bioweapons, our only realistic response is reactive; after the first attack, implement measures to combat it. When have we ever been able to defend against the very first attack? What happens when that first attack kills us all?

But the fearmongering around these issues, is, in my opinion, just a small fraction of the perils that face humankind. Pressing to me is the idea of the permanent underclass -- where even if the technology becomes perfectly safe and aligned, a few people own the most critical technology ever to exist, and everyone else is permanently marginalized. For 99.99% of the world, your labor, ideas, agency will never matter. You will never have any hope of being able to improve the world, affect the world. You will subside for eternity off of the mercy of the elite AI-owning class -- consume your UBI funded AI cheapened slop, algorithmically enhanced uber-entertainment, die a pitiable death, with no hope for you nor your descendants for the rest of human existence for a better life as the elites biologically enhance themselves above mortality. It will be the eternal enslavement of the human race. Perhaps worse, as slavery has economic value, and the potential for revolt. When the armies are filled with robot men, the factories filled with robot workers, we will all become truly useless, truly marginalized, truly oppressed. It will be the end of the world. I do not know if extinction is so much worse than this.

Maybe such a world need not come to pass-- but I’m sure you can see as much as I can the enormous centralizing forces facing such a technology. The companies need to compete amongst each other; they must keep their secrets to themselves. They must limit, or at least have control over, the spread of the most advanced technology, lest the world fall victim to bioweapons, or terror attacks. Above that, the nations have incentive for their own national security and geopolitical prominence to advance the technology and shut each other out. It seems that no matter if the technology is developed by OpenAI or Anthropic or Deepmind or nationalized by the US Government or developed by the CCP, it will end up in the hands of the limited few. No matter the good intentions, I believe incentives (security, competition, politics) will win in the end. To me, such a world of eternal enslavement feels almost inevitable.

And it’s hilarious, completely ridiculous, to me that all the reports, all the expert analysis, refuse to see it coming. The NBER wrote that ‘3.9% of U.S. workers — roughly 5 to 6 million people — sit at the intersection of high AI exposure and low adaptive capacity’. Goldman Sachs says a few million more, Morgan Stanley says a few million less. I think it’s complete fucking bullshit. Look at self driving cars -- the technology is pretty much solved! What is going to happen to the 4 million truckers, millions more small truck drivers, school bus drivers, uber drivers, and related infrastructure workers when the cars can drive themselves, never make mistakes, never need to sleep, never get distracted, what is going to happen to all of them?? And that’s not even taking the slightest look at LLMs, not to mention where advanced robotics is going!

But don’t let the AI doomers distract you. There’s plenty more to worry about. World War has never looked more probable. Warfare is changing; it’s shifting towards autonomous drone technology far unlike anything previous. This is the modern equivalent of discovering guns when everyone else is still working with bows and arrows. It makes so much of the US military hegemony obsolete -- all the expensive interceptors (see Iran) and aircraft carriers and all the things that the US has relied on. And the drones that are so potent? All the raw materials and supply chains stem from China, the US’s biggest adversary. And guess what? There is a perfect window of opportunity over the next five years before demographics crush China for them to try to seize Taiwan, a goal that they have explicitly stated is existential and I think Mr. Xi believes will be his defining legacy.

And if we survive that? Well, we have climate change still -- displacing hundreds of millions of people across the world, enough to make the migration crises of the 2010s look like an elementary school fire drill. We have demographic shifts, where every developing country is virtually destined for a political crisis when there are not enough adults in a few decades to support the elderly. There is still nuclear warfare, where proliferation remains unsolved (and recently, more likely to be expanded) in an era where the generational memory of WW2 and the Cold War has gone forgotten.

No, I think we are in for some dark times ahead. And where is the leadership of the world today? Democratic backsliding is on the rise across the world. There is more war than there has been in decades. People today are more pessimistic. More lonely. More partisan, more apathetic. And yet, crucially, I believe these problems are fundamentally political problems. They concern power, people, and their lives. I do not think that you can solve these things solely through technology.

So what should we do? Should we just try to fight for one of the few spots in the AI elite class, run away from or try to survive the forthcoming crises? Is that all we have left? Fight for the few scraps of wealth and power as the world and the future crumble around us?

There once was a time when men and women fought for something greater than themselves. Where, in a world of enormous, inexplicable doubt, unquantifiable suffering, they chose to think for themselves what a better world would be and fight, bleed, die for it. I think of George Washington, who, facing every precedent, having every opportunity, chose to relinquish power, uniquely amongst history, for the future of a democratic nation. I think of Martin Luther King Jr, facing enormous, institutional oppression, vile, disgusting hatred, was able to choose love and forgiveness, and unceasingly campaign for that cause. Can any of us even comprehend what strength that must take? In the face of pure, abject hatred, to choose love. It is unimaginable.

There once was a time when men and women would choose to face the most difficult questions of life and dedicate themselves to produce answers. What should we do with our lives? What is good and evil? What is the essence of existence? Once upon a time, the great men of the age thought it the highest good to answer these questions with their lives. The age of Plato and Aristotle, who lived millennia ago, who we can grapple with their ideas and stand in awe of their genius today! I think of Kant, who, facing the philosophical impasse of his time, retired from publishing for ten years, before he brought back ideas that defined philosophy for every person who even pretends at wanting to think since! Where is the Kant today? Where is the Hegel? The Nietzsche? In the face of the structures of modern academia, who dares have the arrogance to question the foundations of the world? In the face of the incentive structures for talented young people today, who dares to dedicate their lives to answering the foundational questions? To envisioning a truly different world, a better world?

Today, it does feel as if we have given up. In our politics, we pick along trodden paths that were theorized centuries ago. When democracy was invented, when capitalism was invented, it was an unimaginable leap, a tremendous discovery! Are we done with theorizing? Where is our ambition? In the times we live in, it is badly needed!

The future is nearly upon us, and I believe that nowhere you may run will be safe. There are many easy answers to hide behind. There is a great propensity towards tribalism, defending your people at the cost of others. There is another easy answer in nihilism-- why should we care in the face of such powerful darkness? Still others become married to their own religion or ideologies -- they see the simple answers provided to them, and it explains everything! It must be so!

I think it is not so simple. There are no such easy answers, as much as we long for them. We must rigorously inquire, we must critically think. We must have courage! We must have selflessness! In the face of overwhelming evil, with even the slightest hope of victory, the slightest hope of success for the future of the world, the slightest glimmer of light in the dark, we must fight for it with everything we have! We must forge our own paths! We must seize the moment!

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Feel free to email me at leonjia@berkeley.edu with any questions or comments. Apologies if some of the statements are a bit imprecise, they reflect what I believe (which could be wrong ofc), and I’m happy to give more nuance to my thoughts upon inquiry or in future posts.