Why Silicon Valley’s Vision of the AI Future Should Worry You

Everyone has a vision of the ultimate future, some picture of what the world looks like at its best (or worst), and whether that future is even reachable. In religious studies, we call this an “eschatology.” Eschatology isn’t just the Book of Revelation or the Rapture. The Greek meaning of eschaton is “last things,” and today the word captures the set of beliefs a person holds about where things are headed and what that implies for the present.

You don’t have to be religious to have an eschatology. Political optimism is an eschatology, whatever side you’re on. Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, thinks the future is something we build our way toward with free childcare and buses.

Stephen Miller, one of the architects of the current immigration crackdown, thinks it’s something we had and lost, but can get back through sealing the border and mass deportations. Neither one just describes the future. Both are telling you what you’re obligated to do about it right now.

In other words, your eschatology shapes your ethics, because what you believe is coming determines what you feel obligated to do today. Silicon Valley has an eschatology too, and some of its leading figures have been pretty candid about what it is: AI surpasses humanity, humans become obsolete as a species, and what matters is making sure your version of AI is the one that wins. Understanding that vision as an eschatology, not just a business strategy, explains why some of the most powerful people alive seem so unbothered by what we seem to be losing—our attention spans, our critical thinking, our basic competence at things we used to just know how to do—and so uninterested in being accountable to anyone about it.

To be sure, Silicon Valley CEOs each express their own flavor of this view of AI’s power. Let’s start with OpenAI’s Sam Altman, because he was explicit about where he believes AI is going years before most people had even heard of a chatbot. In 2015, at a startup conference, he told the audience: “I think that AI will probably, most likely, sort of lead to the end of the world.

But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning.” This doomsday eschatology was the basis for his business plan: race to the top because extinction is coming. Since then, Altman’s views have shifted widely. Demand for this tool will be essentially uncapped, and people will do incredible things with it.