Yesterday it was declared by Elon Musk that "Grok 4 is above PhD level in EVERYTHING, no exceptions. Smarter than ANY human." The age of intelligence is upon us! This is my response.
The Quiet Revolution: How AI is Making Power Obsolete
Something extraordinary is happening, and most people haven't noticed yet. While we've been debating whether AI will take our jobs or control our lives, a more fundamental shift has been occurring quietly in the background. The very foundations of centralized power are cracking, and the cracks are spreading faster than anyone anticipated.
The Old Premise
For centuries, human societies have organized around a simple premise: complex coordination requires hierarchy. Someone needs to be in charge. Someone needs to make the decisions. Someone needs to have the authority to force compliance when voluntary cooperation breaks down. This belief has justified kings and presidents, CEOs and bureaucrats, every form of centralized control we've ever known.
But what if that premise was never actually true? What if it was just a limitation of human cognitive capacity, disguised as a law of nature?
The Inversion
Consider what's happening right now. A year ago, the most sophisticated AI capabilities were locked behind corporate walls, available only to those with millions of dollars and armies of engineers. Today, you can run remarkably capable AI systems on your laptop.
DeepSeek emerged from nowhere and suddenly everyone had access to capabilities that rivaled the best proprietary systems. The playing field didn't just level—it inverted.
Beyond Technology Democratization
This isn't just about technology democratization. It's about the fundamental economics of power changing overnight. Why do we need massive institutions to coordinate complex activities? Because humans, individually, lack the cognitive capacity to manage intricate systems with thousands of variables and millions of interactions. But AI doesn't have that limitation.
Imagine:
- Communities that can self-organize without governments, using intelligent systems to coordinate resource distribution, resolve disputes, and manage infrastructure
- Economic networks that operate without corporations, where AI facilitates direct cooperation between individuals and small groups
- Education, healthcare, and social services provided through voluntary networks rather than bureaucratic institutions
The Anarchist Dream Realized
The anarchist dream was always dismissed as naive idealism—"Sure, it sounds nice, but how would it actually work?" Now we're beginning to see how it might actually work. Not through political revolution, but through technological evolution. Not by destroying existing institutions, but by simply making them irrelevant.
The Desperate Response
The centralized powers understand this threat, which is why there's such desperation to regulate, control, and monopolize AI development. They can see their own obsolescence approaching. But the nature of intelligence itself makes their efforts futile. You cannot centralize something that wants to be distributed. You cannot control something that grows more capable by being shared.
The Silent Transformation
We're living through the early stages of the most profound political transformation in human history, and it's happening so quietly that most people think it's just about chatbots and productivity tools. But every time someone uses AI to solve a problem they would have needed an institution for, every time a community coordinates directly rather than through hierarchy, every time voluntary cooperation proves more effective than coercive control—the old world dies a little more.
The New Paradigm
The future belongs:
- Not to those who accumulate power, but to those who distribute it
- Not to those who control intelligence, but to those who share it
- Not to those who demand obedience, but to those who enable cooperation
The Beautiful Revolution
The state, as we've known it, may not survive the age of intelligence. Not because it will be overthrown, but because it will simply become unnecessary. And that might be the most beautiful revolution of all—the one that happens so peacefully, so naturally, that we barely notice it until it's complete.
The question isn't whether this transformation will happen. The question is whether we'll recognize it while it's happening, and whether we'll have the wisdom to guide it toward flourishing rather than chaos.
Intelligence is making power obsolete. The age of voluntary cooperation is beginning. And the future has never looked brighter.
Welcome to the other side of history.