文章探讨了即将到来的“智能时代”以及人工智能（AGI）可能带来的社会变革。作者警示，强大的AI可能导致大规模失业，削弱普通人在经济中的地位，并最终破坏社会契约。文章将“智能诅咒”定义为：强大的行为者不再有动力关心普通人。为了应对这一挑战，文章提出了通过技术手段来增强人类能力、分散AI，以及民主化机构等方式，从而保持人类的经济相关性，并确保人类掌握自己的命运。

🤖️文章指出，随着AGI的到来，自动化将加速发展，导致大规模失业，甚至淘汰人类。强大的行为者将不再需要普通人，从而打破现代社会契约。

🏢文章详细阐述了“金字塔替代”现象，即AI将首先冻结低级别职位招聘，然后通过裁员逐步瓦解现有的组织结构。

💰文章强调，AI将使非人类生产要素（如资本和资源）变得比人类更重要，这可能导致社会流动性停滞，并巩固现有权力结构。

💡为了打破“智能诅咒”，文章提出通过技术手段来增强人类能力，分散AI，并民主化机构，以确保人类在AGI时代保持经济上的相关性，并掌控自己的命运。

Published on April 24, 2025 12:59 PM GMT

We've published an essay series on what we call the intelligence curse. Most content is brand new, and all previous writing has been heavily reworked.

Visit intelligence-curse.ai for the full series.

Below is the introduction and table of contents.

 

We will soon live in the intelligence age. What you do with that information will determine your place in history.

The imminent arrival of AGI has pushed many to try to seize the levers of power as quickly as possible, leaping towards projects that, if successful, would comprehensively automate all work. There is a trillion-dollar arms race to see who can achieve such a capability first, with trillions more in gains to be won.

Yes, that means you’ll lose your job. But it goes beyond that: this will remove the need for regular people in our economy. Powerful actors—like states and companies—will no longer have an incentive to care about regular people. We call this the intelligence curse.

If we do nothing, the intelligence curse will work like this:

Powerful AI will push automation through existing organizations, starting from the bottom and moving to the top. AI will obsolete even outlier human talent. Social mobility will stop, ending the social dynamism and progress that it drives. Non-human factors of production, like capital, resources, and control over AI, will become overwhelmingly more important than humans. This will usher in incentives for powerful actors around the world that break the modern social contract.This could result in the gradual—or sudden—disempowerment of the vast majority of humanity.

But this prophecy is not yet fulfilled; we reject the view that this path is inevitable. We see a different future on the horizon, but it will require a deliberate and concerted effort to achieve it. 

We aim to change the incentives driving the intelligence curse, maintaining human economic relevance and strengthening our democratic institutions to withstand what will likely be the greatest societal disruption in history.

To break the intelligence curse, we should chart a different path on the tech tree, building technology that lets us:

Avert AI catastrophes by hardening the world against them, both because it is good in itself and because it removes the security threats that drive calls for centralization.Diffuse AI, to get it in the hands of regular people. In the short-term, build AI that augments human capabilities. In the long-term, align AI directly to individual users and give everyone control in the AI economy. Democratize institutions, making them more anchored to the needs of humans even as they are buffeted by the changing incentive landscape and fast-moving events of the AGI transition.

In this series of essays, we examine the incoming crisis of human irrelevance and provide a map towards a future where people remain the masters of their destiny.

Chapters

1. Introduction

We will soon live in the intelligence age. What you do with that information will determine your place in history.

2. Pyramid Replacement

Increasingly powerful AI will trigger pyramid replacement: a systematic hollowing out of corporate structures that starts with entry-level hiring freezes and moves upward through waves of layoffs.

3. Capital, AGI, and Human Ambition

AI will make non-human factors of production more important than human ones. The result may be a future where today's power structures become permanent and frozen, with no remaining pathways for social mobility or progress.

4. Defining the Intelligence Curse

With AGI, powerful actors will lose their incentive to invest in regular people–just as resource-rich states today neglect their citizens because their wealth comes from natural resources rather than taxing human labor. This is the intelligence curse.

5. Shaping the Social Contract

The intelligence curse will break the core social contract. While this suggests a grim future, understanding how economic incentives reshape societies points to a solution: we can deliberately develop technologies that keep humans relevant.

6. Breaking the Intelligence Curse

Avert AI catastrophes with technology for safety and hardening without requiring centralizing control. Diffuse AI that differentially augments rather than automates humans and decentralizes power. Democratize institutions, bringing them closer to regular people as AI grows more powerful.

7. History is Yours to Write

You have a roadmap to break the intelligence curse. What will you do with it?

Discuss