Each new technological advancement seems to be more marginally valuable to the top of our society than to the bottom, and that delta seems to be growing over time not shrinking. I suspect “lower level” innovations in the value chain would be different, e.g. agriculture or energy, but let’s be honest about what actually consumes most of our industry’s talent and capital (as allocated by very very few unelected billionaires).

Even if absolute quality of life/prosperity increases, the delta itself is a really, really serious destabilizing force. In fact we know that people can live stably and happily in fairly destitute conditions, not that that should be the goal.

One could be forgiven for feeling like we're caught in a swift tide toward a big, ugly global conflict, the way a lot of currents are flowing right now.

It’s quite concerning to me that nearly everyone wielding influence over AI development has done the same. The ends will always justify the means to them - what is not worth doing when the supposed end is a techno-utopia where trillions live in endless pleasure?

It’s a very convenient fact that up until this techno-utopia, folks like Marc will be well positioned to reap most of the benefits from technology development.

To be fair to Marc Andreessen, he's not the first to have this grandiose vision, and politically almost every ideology have had their fair share of "manifestos".

With that said, it's not a very interesting manifesto, it tries everything in it's book to justify it:

- Appeal to authority (citing various people, such as Milton friedman)

- Appeal to emotion (every time someone doesn't create an AI, someone dies)

- Dehumanize in the name of humanity (the classical the end justifies the means)

If people were to believe in this drivel, I wouldn't be surprised if it spawned yet another extreme and radical political ideology, as it doesn't seek to try and see the world for what it is but instead reject reality and substitute it with their own vision.

However I'm also a bit skeptical of using "facts and stats" to debunk the manifesto, facts and stats are good but since most manifestos are radical by nature, and as such I think that fact checking only will lead to self-satisfaction instead of an actual debunking, since the supporters will hand-wave it away.

That reads as either naive or ominous, depending on whether "us" is interpreted as "the entire human race" or "Marc and his billionaire cronies"

Uhh, does Marc Andreesen know how things went down historically for alchemy…? Or how the word “alchemy” is used colloquially?

If there would be techno pessimism we wouldn't have many life saving medicines, cars, heating and other comforts.

But on the other hand: are humans more content with life? Social media is cancer in 95% of cases.

Tech will solve many things, but the problem of the human mind and it's emotional and irrational tendencies is what actually needs to be solved and understood.

Almost every paragraph has some questionable claims, but one of the more laughable ones is the claim that the free market “killed millions” when rich countries didn’t share Covid vaccines worldwide. Or that markets are ineffective for lifting people out of poverty because global inequality exists.

In truth they are all the same thing. The utterly useless casting themselves as essential like the typical liberal arts professor, but with less use for general writing writing. A billion "critiques of capitalism" have done less for the poor than one outsourcing to a third world nation. What has the "precautionary principle" wrought for anybody?

apex parasites, Marc. that's all you are.