My private mental ravings put into words, better, by someone else…
[A]n important question is how this globalized, unaccountable tech industry sees its goals. What does it want? What will all the profits be invested in?
What is the plan?
The honest answer is: rocket ships and immortality.
I wish I was kidding.
— Maciej Ceglowski
So they worry about how to give Mars an earth-like climate, rather than how to give Earth an earth-like climate. They debate how to make a morally benevolent God-like AI, rather than figuring out how to put ethical guard rails around the more pedestrian AI they are introducing into every area of people’s lives.
The tech industry enjoys tearing down flawed institutions, but refuses to put work into mending them.
Read the whole thing, as they (used to) say.
tl;dr (as they now say): what happens when someone truly determined, and perhaps not with your best interests at heart, takes over the machine these proudly non-political nerds have created that controls your lives. Politics is what decides what happens; if you refuse to play it, it means you are playing badly.
Because colonizing Mars and immortality ain’t gonna happen. It’s too damn powerful to not be used.
The scary version? They already are.