Essay Warns Policymakers Against Treating AGI as Inevitable

Summary

In this opinion essay, Nathalie Maréchal argues that policymakers should examine the beliefs behind claims that artificial general or superintelligence is imminent, inevitable, or capable of solving humanity’s problems. She groups related currents under the label “AI cult,” drawing on the TESCREAL bundle and terms such as “technological salvation,” and says their advocates can treat AI systems as conscious, all-capable beings and human transformation or space colonization as moral goals. The essay traces links among transhumanism, the Singularity, modern cosmism, effective altruism, longtermism, and effective accelerationism, arguing that speculative future benefits can be used to justify accelerating AGI development while discounting harms to people alive today. Maréchal also describes the “Dark Enlightenment,” a distinct neoreactionary current that rejects democratic constraints and favors rule by technology executives; she argues that the two currents have converged in a political project she calls technofascism. She cautions against treating the divide between AI “boomers” and “doomers” as a fundamental opposition, and says that companies with different regulatory positions may still share assumptions about AGI and longtermism. The essay distinguishes viewing AI as a human-built technology from treating it as a humanlike, autonomous entity, saying these views lead to different policy conclusions. Its conclusion urges advocates to scrutinize proposals tied to existential risk, AI competition, or future benefits by asking whether they make sense if AGI never arrives and whether they address present-day harms. Maréchal identifies concentrated wealth and power, rather than the arrival or failure of a superintelligent system, as the central danger policymakers should confront.