"AI firms are interested in developing tools and marketing strategies that revolve around the allure of AGI—around a stillborn god that will transform large swaths of society into excessively profitable enterprises and incredibly efficient operations. Think of it as a desperate attempt to defend capitalism, to preserve the status quo (capitalism) while purging recent reforms that purportedly undermine it (democracy, liberalism, feminism, environmentalism, etc.). Sam Altman, OpenAI’s co-founder, has repeatedly called for “a new social contract,” though most recently has insisted the “AI revolution” will force the issue on account of “how powerful we expect [AGI] to be.” It doesn’t take much to imagine that the new social contract will be a nightmarish exterminist future where AI powers surveillance, discipline, control, and extraction, instead of “value creation” for the whole of humanity.
The subsuming of art springs out of the defense of capitalism—more and more will have to be scavenged and cannibalized to sustain the status quo and somehow, someday, realize this supposedly much more profitable horizon. The ascendance of fascism comes with the purge—the attempt to rollback institutions and victories seen as shackles on the ability of capitalism to deliver prosperity (and limiters on the inordinate power and privilege for an unimaginably pampered and cloistered elite).
Both are part and parcel to what’s going on, but one project is objectively more dangerous (and ambitious) than the other. In that way, then, all of this is a distraction."
https://thetechbubble.substack.com/p/does-openais-latest-marketing-stunt
