Humanity is rapidly progressing toward artificial superintelligence (ASI) and technical capabilities that far outstrip our collective wisdom and empathy. Lacking that wisdom and empathy, it is unlikely that these tools will be deployed for collective benefit. Capitalistic greed and national self-interest propel this process to the exclusion of the global public, and we are already seeing artificial intelligence (AI) used to dominate and control through military applications and corporate arms races.

Existing organizations in the AI space are fully embedded within these systems, making it unclear how they will be able to pivot toward collective interest as the potential wealth and power yielded by monopolizing control of these powerful technologies grows exponentially. Given the decisive military advantage represented by ASI, a race between the US and China to be the first to attain it, along with the existential risks this entails, looks increasingly inevitable.

We posit that a new type of system is needed to align emerging AI and ultimate ASI with the needs of humanity at large. Achieving this will require a tractable technical approach for maintaining pluralistic values as AI systems become ever more powerful and that power becomes ever easier to concentrate. In its initial stages, it will need to provide an offramp for great power conflict over ASI. In later stages, it will need to align actors at any scale with collective needs and reward both effort and impact toward the type of future in which humanity can not just survive the transition to AI primacy, but thrive within it.

Given the magnitude of this challenge, this system will need to be massively scalable, accept contributions from people of diverse backgrounds and skills, and intermediate the allocation of resources and control among those parties given a new set of collective values centered on the maintenance of a pluralistic global society and the equal and intrinsic value of all life.

We propose just such a system.

We formed Humanity Unleashed, Inc. to facilitate the transition of humanity’s systems toward valuing life directly in the expectation that future technologies would obviate the decreasingly meritocratic function of the global economy. Although the point of that transition has not yet fully arrived, it is increasingly clear that its arrival is imminent. It is critical that this transition does not arrive before we have adapted our systems to the fact that humans without economic value are still valuable. Ironically, human sensibilities are the way in which we determine what “should” be in the world. Without humans, there really isn’t a point to any of this.

However clear the imperative, it is equally clear that our current systems are not up to this task. Our news cycles are filled with one crisis after another putting our inability to coordinate with and care about one another and our collective future on full display. 

Despite the obvious need for adjustment, our economic and political systems are doubling down on the types of divisive and power-motivated behavior that created these problems in the first place.  Even the proposed solutions to our division are, unironically, put into divisive terms, with different camps advocating for returns to unifying tradition or an embrace of radical self-determinism and acceptance.

It is difficult, within such a context, to see a path forward that can inspire hope. Despite this, resignation is not the answer, particularly when the stakes for inaction are so high. For those with a bit of patience and the willingness to engage with some technical complexity, we have an approach that we believe can bridge the gap between our morally ambiguous and unstable present and a future that is kind, just, and durably human.