The Intelligence Curse

By Luke Drago and Rudolf Laine

This section explores how the arrival of AGI could trigger an “intelligence curse,” where automation of all work removes incentives for states and companies to care about ordinary people. It frames the trillion-dollar race toward AGI as not just an economic shift, but a transformation in power dynamics and human relevance.

Source:

https://intelligence-curse.ai/?utm_source=bluedot-impact

A podcast by BlueDot Impact.

Learn more on the AI Safety Fundamentals website.

Chapters

• 0:06 Chapter 1: Introduction
• 3:42 Chapter 2: Pyramid Replacement
• 7:14 This technology is different
• 9:31 AI in the corporate pyramid
• 17:46 Some caveats are needed
• 19:15 The future of work?
• 24:51 Chapter 3: Capital, AGI, and Human Ambition
• 27:04 The default solution
• 28:17 Money currently struggles to buy talent
• 31:33 No more outlier outcomes?
• 36:35 Enforced equality is unlikely
• 38:48 The default outcome
• 41:41 Towards the intelligence curse
• 43:52 Chapter 4: Defining the Intelligence Curse
• 46:06 Why powerful actors care about you
• 49:46 The resource curse
• 55:02 Explaining the intelligence curse
• 1:02:24 Can the economy sideline human consumption?
• 1:03:23 Breaking the resource curse
• 1:09:01 Chapter 5: Shaping the Social Contract
• 1:12:44 Is society really that exposed to economic incentives?
• 1:19:29 Might AI free us from competitive pressures?
• 1:24:31 Differential technological development
• 1:25:51 The good outcome
• 1:27:26 Chapter 6: Breaking the Intelligence Curse
• 1:29:07 Avert
• 1:29:55 Averting catastrophe enables liberty
• 1:37:48 Technology to avert catastrophe
• 1:44:04 Policies to support this
• 1:44:44 Diffuse
• 1:49:39 Short-term: extend the human-in-the-loop period to enable decentralization
• 1:54:23 Building tech for human capabilities
• 2:05:37 Long-term: decentralization & user-alignment keeps humans in the loop
• 2:07:06 Policies for diffusion
• 2:09:01 Democratize
• 2:10:32 Democratizing technologies
• 2:14:10 Democratizing policies
• 2:15:39 Chapter 7: History is Yours to Write