One of the recurrent paradoxes of populism is that it starts by warning us that all human elites are driven by a dangerous hunger for power, but often ends by entrusting all power to a single ambitious human.

Our tendency to summon powers we cannot control stems not from individual psychology but from the unique way our species cooperates in large numbers. The main argument of this book is that humankind gains enormous power by building large networks of cooperation, but the way these networks are built predisposes us to use that power unwisely. Our

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 32 Mohnish Kedia, “Sanitation Policy in India—Designed to Fail?,” Policy Design and Practice 5, no. 3 (2022): 307–25. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 33 See, for example, Madden, Bryson, and Palimi, “Information Behavior in Pre-literate Societies,” 33–53. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 34 Catherine Salmon and Jessica Hehman, “The Evolutionary

political questions concern the survival of democracy or the fair distribution of wealth. This book has juxtaposed the discussion of AI with the discussion of sacred canons like the Bible, because we are now at the critical moment of AI canonization. When church fathers like Bishop Athanasius decided to include 1 Timothy in the biblical dataset

adapting to it involved catastrophic experiments such as imperialism and Nazism. If the AI revolution leads us to similar kinds of experiments, can we really be certain we will muddle through again? My goal

two digital spheres may drift further and further apart. Chinese software would talk only with Chinese hardware and Chinese infrastructure, and the same would happen on the other side of the Silicon Curtain. Since digital code influences human behavior, and human behavior in turn shapes digital code, the two sides may well be moving along different

of wealth and power. The British couldn’t move every cotton mill from Calcutta to Manchester, or shift the oil wells from Kirkuk to Yorkshire. Information is different. Unlike cotton and oil, digital data can be sent from Malaysia or Egypt to Beijing or San Francisco at almost the speed of light. And unlike land, oil fields, or textile factories,

world’s hegemonic powers, are letting the tiny Gulf state hold on to its fabulous riches. Many people describe the international system as a jungle. If so, it is a jungle in which tigers allow fat chickens to live in relative safety. Qatar, Tonga, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Solomon Islands all indicate that we are living in a postimperial era. They

your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”[15] This is true of AI too. It would be foolish of dictators to believe that AI will necessarily tilt the balance of power in their favor. If they aren’t careful, AI will just grab power to