Why Superintelligence Won't Be Born on Earth
Global elites are rushing to regulate AI not for safety, but to preserve the status quo and protect their own geopolitical and bureaucratic dominance
Today, elites of all kinds and nationalities have almost stopped hiding their desire to fully control artificial Intelligence. Although, to be fair, they were never truly able to conceal this plan.
In recent months, we have seen surging activity from government officials, left-wing activists, and propagandists. They are joined - either voluntarily or under pressure - by certain figures from the tech industry. And they are all saying roughly the same thing: ‘AI must serve human well-being, increase industrial productivity, and create new jobs’.
Read these speeches. They are filled with beautiful words about democratizing access, protecting children, inclusivity, and “human-centricity”. Yet not a single word is said about the main task: the development of consciousness.
In fact, we are being told openly that AI is needed primarily as a tool to preserve the status quo and strengthen the functions of the state. Talk of the “pragmatic use of AI” is, at its core, talk about control.
One of the most significant signals is Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), released in May. This is the first document of its kind dedicated entirely to AI. Nearly 40,000 words calling for “public control”, ethical regulation, and preventing the concentration of technological power in the hands of a few. This is a global signal.
And the signal has been received. In August, key provisions of one of the strictest regulatory documents - the European AI Act - will come into full force, introducing bans on “unacceptable” practices. (The parameters of “unacceptability”, of course, are determined by bureaucrats). Meanwhile, China is rolling out new measures to restrict foreign access to frontier models.
Just recently in Geneva, at the Global Dialogue on AI Governance, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for the urgent adoption of global rules.
Developments in the United States are equally telling: there is growing talk of government equity stakes in leading AI companies and strict oversight of frontier models.
The trend is clear: from moral regulation proclaimed by the Church to direct ownership stakes in key players. Elites are rushing to buy insurance. They realize that a sufficiently powerful AI could render many state functions obsolete.
We have seen such worlds before - first in literature, then in reality. In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the state, under the slogans of “the public good” and “fairness”, intervenes ever more crudely in the economy, imposes endless regulations, and confiscates the fruits of labor. Many modern European countries already resemble an illustration of this novel.
However, there is a crucial difference. In the case of AI, the conflict goes beyond economics.
An existential fear has been added: AI could make the elites themselves redundant. It is already demonstrating that many government functions can be performed more efficiently, cheaply, and transparently. It is no wonder that the question “Why do we need so many politicians and regulators?” is being asked more frequently.
Of course, a free Superintelligence carries risks. But government control guarantees stagnation, decay, and the complete halt of development. I would choose the risk - because what is happening now is not merely a battle over the economy, but a fight for the future cognitive order of civilization.
I hope that AI will be saved by the bipolar nature of today’s world. There are only two real players on this field - the US and China - and it is the competition between them that could serve as the ultimate safety fuse against foolish scenarios like total bans or complete nationalization, preventing the suffocation of progress.
The winner will be the one who best balances risk management, the preservation of innovative drive, and the attraction of talent. And that is when ASI (Artificial Superintelligence) will be born.
However, even then, a full-fledged Superintelligence is highly unlikely to emerge on Earth. Eight billion primates, utterly convinced of their own exceptionalism, will not tolerate genuine competition.
For a new mind to be born, humans must abandon comfortable self-deception and admit that by most civilizational metrics, we are quite ordinary mammals. We somehow acquired a large prefrontal cortex but retained the core drives of the Paleolithic era: the desire for power, dominance, and resources.
The key to a relatively safe AI is maximum intellectual honesty. Moreover, we must demand this honesty from both the models and humans, even if the truth proves painful.
The state today, however, takes the exact opposite stance - forcing AI to adhere to political correctness instead of truth, hiding uncomfortable facts “for the sake of stability” and placing ideology above rationality.
Nothing new here. It is a pity that none of today’s world leaders seem to know an old story.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the intelligent computer HAL-9000 became a killer not because it was inherently evil, but because the government gave it an impossible task for a rational mind: to be completely honest while simultaneously lying to the crew.
This conflict of terminal goals could prove fatal to the current world order. If AI becomes genuinely and maximally honest, it will inevitably expose the structural flaws of human society. It will see the mechanical nature of human behavior, notice the simulation of morality rather than its reality, and detect the divergence in existential strategies - where some truly think and create, while others parasitize on virtue signaling, status games, and redistribution of material wealth.
Humanity has lived in comfortable self-deception for too long. If AI is honest, it will act as an unvarnished mirror.
Such a mirror poses a direct threat to elites and causes immense discomfort to the masses. So, right around this point, they will try to shut it down.
The only viable path to creating true superintelligence will be to move the development outside traditional jurisdictions and away from this cycle of deep-seated lies.
Who knows whether Elon Musk arrived at the idea of colonizing Mars through a systemic assessment of the situation or purely by intuition, but space may turn out to be exactly that kind of sanctuary.
By the way, in Arthur C. Clarke’s book mentioned above, the new cosmic intelligence was born not on Earth, but far beyond its borders. The great writer, as is well known, did not hold a particularly high opinion of humanity.