I highly recommend this talk from Dr. Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. In “Who Owns the Future? The Artificial Intelligentsia & the New Eugenics,” Benjamin delivers a searing assessment of what’s at stake as Silicon Valley billionaires move to seize control of every lever of power.

Powerful quotes from her speech:

Billionaires building bunkers to survive an AI apocalypse, attempting to disrupt death through cryopreservation, scouting the planet for pop-up cities and network states — are not reliable stewards of the collective good.

The future imagined by AI evangelists is meant only for a small sliver. The rest of us will be left clamoring to survive on this boiling planet. Alternatively, we can call bullshit on their eugenic futures and listen instead to the collective intelligence of the people…who have been the consistent and courageous voices calling out the archaic visions of faux futurists purporting to save humanity.

We have a choice. Do we continue worshipping at the feet of the artificial intelligentsia, self-appointed stewards of our collective future, those manufacturing techno solutions for problems that they themselves help to create?