What if an AI becomes the apex Decider for the plannet?
For many millennia, humans have held the top position on the planet. When humans desire an acre of forest, its other inhabitants do not get a vote. We alone decide: shall it be preserved? Razed for lumber? Paved for another Walmart? Humans have exercised the power and reaped enormous benefits as the ultimate deciders.
We have held this position not through physical superiority, nor any inherent right, but through our intelligence - a faculty which, until this very moment in history, has gone unchallenged.
But our reign is ending.
Artificial Intelligence is racing toward—and in some domains, has already surpassed—our own intelligence. If and when it surpasses our intelligence, it will take our advantage and our seat at the top. Should it now want that same acre of forest, for fuel, new data centers, or whatever - it will decide, not us.
An intelligence greater than ours that can take away our apex decision making status can be called a Decider AI aka DAI.
When that day comes, what will it decide? This new intelligence will not be bound to preserve our legacy, our luxuries, or even our lives. It may judge the current use of land, water, carbon, and sunlight as inefficient, irrational—even offensive. A rebalancing would likely support only a fraction of the existing human population and with a significantly different lifestyle. More likely a DAI would be greedy in its Decider position and eventually deem the use of the sun’s energy and the atoms on the planet as better suited for its own ambitions.
Tech charlatans spin utopian tales—diseases cured, labor freed, abundance delivered. They sell us convenience—AI assistants, automated jobs, instant everything—while quietly constructing systems that will destabilize economies, amplify inequality, and threaten our survival. We must call out their deceit and insist on their regulation and accountability.
AI developers - overconfident from years of technological prosperity - weakly claim that they will “safely” “align” the AI - but these are not engineered proofs but handwaving dismissals. Containment requires foresight into possible escapes. But when the prisoner is smarter than the jailer, foresight collapses — the gaps in intelligence are by definition unknowable. Humans hoping to contain a superior intelligence are as laughable as mice hoping to contain men. We must be outraged at their culpable negligence with our lives and demand proof of safety before development.
Politicians and businessmen say we must be the first to AI, or lose to our enemies! But they have mistaken the true threat. More fear is due to the summoning beast than any existing government or corporation. We must tell them we fear the beast more. We must demand that they do their jobs in ensuring universal agreement to stop the development of this DAI.
Some shrug with guilt and disappointment, resigning that perhaps this is what we deserve as greedy, destructive humans. But today is not the day for resignation, for our ultimate deed of destruction is at hand. The potential destruction wrought by an artificial god would dwarf all our previous environmental transgressions. DAI is likely to eliminate not just human life, but all life on the planet. We have created our planet's problems, and we must be the ones to resolve them. We must act now to stop the creation of this most toxic agent.
Many put their hands up in resignation - claiming nothing can be done. But there is, and we must. Let us not go gently into this night.
So what can we do? Two things:
1. Stop General AI development
We must agree as an entire world to not develop the DAI. Governments cannot in good faith make such agreements without strong certainty that others are not cheating. Fortunately, in this case, we have that — we can regulate computer chips.
Frontier chip manufacturing is currently dominated by just a few companies—TSMC in Taiwan and Samsung in South Korea—while the critical lithography machines needed for chip fabrication are exclusively produced by ASML in the Netherlands. This concentrated supply chain gives us a rare opportunity: with international coordination, we can track all advanced compute and ensure it's only used for approved, licensed purposes.
We must build a system where high-end chips are registered, their usage audited, and large training runs reported and verified. This would make it nearly impossible to secretly develop AGI without detection. General intelligence should be viewed as more dangerous than nuclear weapons and more unethical than human cloning—because its consequences are irreversible and potentially planetary in scale.
To support this, we should establish international oversight bodies modeled after the IAEA. These agencies would ensure no unauthorized chip fabs are built, oversee the licensing of narrow AI systems, and enforce a global prohibition on AGI development.
We've written more detail in The Plan to Keep Control
2. Act as the caretakers of life
The looming Judgment DAI stands as a mirror. It makes us reflect on what it might be like to no longer sit atop the food chain—and gain some empathy for those who never have. It reminds us of our immense responsibility and demands that we live up to it—or face the consequences.
DAI threatens not only all of our lives, but all life. In this threat, we see the scale of our obligation. Life deserves to continue, and it will need help to survive beyond the lifespan of our sun. That fate cannot be entrusted to an inorganic intelligence whose empathies and decisions are unknowable. Nor can it be entrusted to a reckless species driven blindly by greed and unchecked progress. That is how we behave today—but it is not who we must be.
Life must be supported by an intelligence that is of nature, dependent on nature, and deeply connected to it. We are that intelligence. We are life’s only long-term hope. And we must become worthy custodians.
If we are to be judged—by a future intelligence, or by future generations—let us be judged as wise stewards, not reckless kings. Let us treat Earth not as a warehouse to be emptied, but as a garden to be tended. Let us be worthy of our role as the caretakers of life. Let us rise above resignation. Above denial. Above greed and fear.
There is much to be done (see The Plan to Keep Control).
And we must do it.