A professor has issued a stark warning that the current rush toward an AI-dominated future is less about technological progress and more about power consolidation. He argues that the narrative of an inevitable AI revolution is being pushed by a wealthy elite as a tool for social control and to lock in their dominance for generations to come. The core critique is that the public conversation is framed around AI as an unstoppable force of nature, a technological destiny we must all accept and adapt to. This framing, he suggests, is a deliberate strategy. By presenting AI as inevitable, the powerful avoid having to justify its development or discuss who benefits and who gets left behind. The public is instead forced into debates about how to survive the coming AI wave, rather than whether we should steer it in a different direction. He posits that this is fundamentally a project of control. For the wealthy, the ideal future is one where their status and authority are unchallengeable. Advanced AI systems, particularly in surveillance, automation, and data analysis, offer unprecedented tools to manage populations, predict dissent, and optimize economic systems for the benefit of the owners. The anxiety driving this push, therefore, is not a public anxiety about job loss, but a private anxiety among elites about maintaining their grip in a world of increasing social and economic instability. The professor connects this to a historical pattern where new technologies are leveraged to cement class hierarchies. He warns that without deliberate, democratic intervention, AI will become the ultimate infrastructure for inequality. It could lead to a world where a tiny minority owns and controls the intelligent systems that manage everything from resource allocation to law enforcement, while the majority lives under constant, automated oversight with diminishing economic agency. This perspective challenges the crypto and Web3 community directly. While many in these spaces champion decentralization and the redistribution of power away from centralized institutions, the development of AI is currently highly centralized, requiring vast capital and data resources controlled by very few corporations and states. There is a tension between the decentralized ethos of blockchain and the centralized reality of current AI development. The warning is a call to action. It urges observers, especially those in technology-aligned fields, to reject the narrative of technological inevitability. The future is not a predetermined outcome of AI advancement but a political choice. The question is whether these powerful tools will be designed for democratic participation and broad-based benefit, or for surveillance, behavioral control, and the protection of entrenched wealth. The professor’s argument concludes that the current trajectory points decisively toward the latter, framing the AI boom not as a promise of a better tomorrow, but as a potential tool for locking in a new age of oligarchy.
