2025-08-05
Will AI drive us insane through our auto-tyrannical fantasies?
To be read whilst listening to “I Wanna Be Sedated” by The Ramones
In his 2017 book “Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power”, the philosopher Byung-Chul Han made a point that blew my mind. He observed that for most of history, most humans in the world lived under some kind of tyranny – where a king or queen, shogun, landowner etc. possessed and wielded power over them.
Those of us lucky enough to be born in the developed world in recent times think that we are free from tyranny, but we are not. Han feels that we have shifted from an allo-tyranny (where another person tyrannizes us) to an auto-tyranny (where we tyrannize ourselves).
What he means is that we all have a constant loop in our heads saying “Why aren’t I a billionaire/ the next Bill Gates/ Steve Jobs/ Elon Musk? Where is my startup that will change the world?”) And we are much better than others at tyrannizing ourselves, because we know our own weaknesses, and have 24 hour access to our own brains.
For me personally, this feeling often gets amplified when I tell people I was a videogames programmer in the 1980s, and they seem shocked and confused that I am not mega-rich.)
I have been thinking recently that AI, and particularly agentic AI, is amplifying the auto-tyranny for those of us who think about such things. If I was smart, courageous and committed enough, why haven’t I created a startup with almost no humans, and thousands of AI agents running around making me money and changing the world? My friend and colleague Arnold Gao recently discussed with me the thought experiment of a ‘one person unicorn’ ; a company with literally one human, maxing out on AI agents, and achieving billion dollar valuation.
It seems to me that AI-powered auto-tyranny is leading to/ could lead to exacerbating mental health issues like anxiety and depression, and negative employment effects: quiet quitting, lying flat (躺平) etc.
May we need to create specific self-help strategies/ therapies/ remedies to help people address their auto-tyrannical tendencies in a world of AI possibility? Maybe ultra-ironically, someone could develop an anti-auto-tyranny AI therapist, and make themselves incredibly rich.
#unthink
#unask
#unlearn
#AI
#AgenticAI
#GenerativeAI
#AGI
#mentalhealth
The image Dave made for this
An AI (ChatGPT)-generated cartoon of a woman sat at a desk with her head in her hands. A genie with the same face as her stands behind her angrily looking down at her, with multiple arms holding up posters with words like Agentic AI, GenAI, Startup, Unicorn, Growth. The colours are greyscale.