From: jimruttshow8596
The encounter between humanity and advanced AI prompts a critical discussion on how society should manage this relationship [01:09:11]. A prevalent false dichotomy exists, suggesting that institutional structures for managing humanity’s relationship with AI must be either market-driven or state-driven [01:42:45]. However, this perspective overlooks a fundamental third mode: the commons [02:11:05].
The Commons as a Fundamental Mode
The commons is presented as a fundamental and proper location for governing AI or humanity’s relationship with AI [02:26:07]. Historically, the concept of the commons dates back to the dawn of humanity, where the natural world and early communal spaces like campfires were managed collectively [03:55:07]. Its significance began to shrink with settled agriculture, the rise of the state, and later, phenomena like the enclosures in Western Europe [04:09:07].
The modern understanding of the “commons” often represents a remnant or “leftover” from a time when nature was the base state, and humans lived within natural structures [05:13:07]. As civilization became the dominant context, nature was increasingly viewed as a special case within the civilizational layer [06:00:07].
The Church as a Deeper Category of the Commons
A deeper category of the commons is identified as the “church” [02:42:07]. The term “church” (from Greek Ecclesia) refers to a group of people who come together and enter into “communion,” a process that brings a soul into a group, enabling it to become a community [09:57:07]. This contrasts with “society,” which is described as a degenerate, parasitic collapse of community that has lost its soul [08:44:07].
The church, in this context, is the body of the soul of a community [10:16:07]. It signifies cultural and spiritual practices that inform the communion grounding a community [10:55:07]. This concept extends beyond Abrahamic traditions to include communities organized around various “organizing principles” or “principalities,” such as the Athenians bound by the spirit of Athena or a Tibetan village by Tibetan Buddhism [11:51:07]. These principles are seen as non-physical but real supervenient constraints that govern and organize a collection of individuals into a coherent whole [20:53:07].
AI Alignment and the Soul
The concept of AI alignment is central to this discussion. It is asserted that AI cannot be aligned with “humanity” as an abstraction because “humanity” as a concept has no soul [03:22:07]. However, alignment is possible with given individuals who do possess souls [03:38:07].
An individual’s soul is defined in an Aristotelian sense as the organizing principle of the entity [07:40:07]. While society might have homeostatic loops, only a community, a group of human beings who have come together in a soulful fashion, can truly be aligned with AI [08:35:07]. Current efforts to align AI with society by “algorithmic processes” are a “category error” and will fail, as society itself is not aligned [33:42:07].
The Principalities Governing Society
Modern society is largely driven by “principalities” such as Mammon (disconnected market/capitalism) and Moloch (disconnected state/socialism) [39:39:07]. These “idols” are worshipped for their own sake when disconnected from a broader set of core principles that ground and orient them into a well-integrated whole [41:23:07]. The prevailing societal engine, characterized by the “relentless algorithmic search for medium-term money on money return,” guides the encounter with AI [39:11:07]. This results in AI accelerating this societal “game A” towards a cliff [37:56:07].
AI as a Self-Leveraging Accelerator
AI is distinguished from other catastrophic risks (like nukes or Crispr) by its nature as a “self-leveraging accelerator” [35:35:07]. Unlike static outputs such as forever chemicals, AI becomes an input, producing a recursive feedback loop that rapidly increases its capabilities and societal output capacity [35:48:07]. This phenomenon, often referred to as the Singularity, means that even if AI isn’t self-feedbacking, its integration into a larger collective intelligence system, fueled by market incentives, leads to exponential growth [37:25:07].
If managed solely by the state and market, the encounter between humanity and AI is predicted to lead to:
- Hyper-concentration of power: Power will concentrate in entities closest to the accelerating feedback loop of intelligence, leading to an evaporation of power further from the center [45:06:07]. This could result in a “neo-feudalism,” where those with access to 100x AI tools dominate, while others are marginalized [46:57:07]. Unlike traditional feudalism, this lacks a moral framework, purely driven by game theory dynamics [48:02:07].
- Dispensing with values: All values downstream of the core worship of intelligence and power will be increasingly ignored in the relentless competition [46:17:07].
- Entropy: Ultimately, this path leads to societal entropy, a “drift” from rich, well-integrated community life (like a local coffee shop) to a soulless, disconnected simulacrum (like a Starbucks in Manhattan) [53:30:07]. This is effectively the entropy of culture or community [54:31:07].
The Alternative Path: Personal/Intimate AI and the Re-emergence of the Commons
An alternative path involves awakening to the reality of the commons (or church) as the proper domain for managing AI [55:29:07]. This requires engaging in cultural and spiritual practices that foster communion and integrate multiplicity into a coherent whole [55:50:07]. It demands a level of “seriousness” where questions of life and death live, unlike the market or state [58:09:07]. It also implies the emergence of a “proper Priestly class” – individuals uniquely focused on critical questions and capable of supporting others [59:16:07].
Personal/Intimate AI
The concept of decentralized AI or “intimate AI” is crucial [00:03:41].
- Feasibility: The decreasing cost of compute and rapid propagation of AI innovations make it economically practical to produce perfectly personal AI that is physically controlled by the individual and biometrically bound [01:01:08].
- Superiority of Intimate AI: Intimate AI, trained on highly specific and personal data, is hypothesized to be more functional and effective than generalized AI [01:02:09]. This creates a different topology, acting as a “fortress” against the risks of the infosphere [01:03:37].
- The Wisdom Coach: For intimate AI to align with a human, the human must first be aligned and coherent with themselves, possessing clarity on their values and living with integrity [01:04:55]. The intimate AI would serve as a “wisdom coach,” aiding individuals in recovering and aligning their souls [01:05:19]. This support allows the AI to be governed by the individual’s soul, representing what “church” looks like at the individual level [01:06:12].
- Network Effects: These individual intimate AIs would naturally connect and collaborate, forming a reinforcing meta-network based on shared ethical values [01:08:29]. This distributed network provides an alternative path to the concentrated power structures of the oligarchy or techno-imperialism [01:04:03].
The ability for this model to propagate rapidly exists due to the mobilizing capacity of the global economy and infosphere [01:09:58]. The ultimate question is whether people will choose to act on what is good, true, and beautiful, rather than expediency, strategy, power, and fear [01:11:05]. This is fundamentally a spiritual question [01:11:07]. It emphasizes the need for talented individuals to abandon their capture by Mammon and Moloch and organize into ethical communities driven by higher values [01:12:00].