Comment by prohobo

I'll take a swing.

Dario's essay carefully avoids its own conclusion. He argues that AI will democratize mass casualty weapons (biology especially), that human coordination at civilizational scale is impossible, and that human-run surveillance states inevitably corrupt. But he stops short of the obvious synthesis: the only survivable path is an AI-administered panopticon.

That sounds dystopian until you think it through:

    - The panopticon is coming regardless. The question is who runs it.

    - Human-run = corruption, abuse, "rules for thee but not for me."

    - AI-run = potentially incorruptible, no ego, no blackmail, no bullshit.

    - An AI doesn't need to watch you in any meaningful sense. It processes, flags genuine threats, and ignores everything else. No human ever sees your data.

    - Crucially: it watches the powerful too. Politicians, corporations, billionaires finally become actually accountable.

This is the Helios ending from Deus Ex, and it's the Culture series' premise. Benevolent AI sovereignty isn't necessarily dystopia, and it might be the only path to something like Star Trek.

The reason we can't talk about this is that it's unspeakable from inside the system. Dario can't say it (he's an AI company CEO.) Politicians can't say it because it sounds insanely radical. So the discourse stays stuck on half-measures that everyone knows won't work.

I honestly believe this might be the future to work toward, because the alternatives are basically hell.