Public edition V1.2 · Launch reading guide
As AI Grows More Powerful,
How Should We Look After Our Own Interests?
You run a small studio with a friend. Suppose an AI tool can do some of the work that previously required both of you: you may earn more and finally stop working late every night. Your friend, however, may lose their former source of income.
What is wrong with looking after your own life? Perhaps the real question is not whether you should care for yourself, but whether you have fully thought through what caring for yourself means.
As AI Grows More Powerful, How Should We Look After Our Own Interests? starts from this illustrative scenario and advances a clear judgment:
Replacing self-interest first with self-interest with others first as the underlying logic of human society and of AGI's generation of objectives and purposes is the only path to avoiding irreversible consequences for human social development in the AGI era.
This does not ask ordinary people to love themselves less or always satisfy others first. It asks whether, before we decide what to seek and how to obtain it, the people and shared conditions that will bear the consequences have entered our understanding and can change that decision.
From dividing work in the studio, to how society rewards success, to the basis on which AGI generates objectives and purposes, the book develops eleven questions: Why is winning an opportunity different from leaving others permanently without opportunities? Why might seeing further still not change what we truly want? Why does control remain necessary without replacing questions about purpose?
The eighth question explains the only-path claim directly. The text then returns to situations everyone must face: If others do not change, will changing first put me at a disadvantage? Can I still refuse after considering others? How can I rethink what I entrust to AI today?
The book does not promise that every relationship can be a win-win, or hide questions that remain unanswered. You can follow the causal argument, or stop at a specific step and offer a different judgment.
You can read the complete work without first reading the theoretical originals. Further reading remains available at the end for continued inquiry, and a channel for discussion is open after reading.
How we look after our own interests, and the basis on which increasingly powerful intelligence plans its actions, are entering each other's futures.
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This is the launch guide for public edition V1.2, not a substitute for its full argument.
Several AI tools assisted with writing and layout. The author is responsible for content selection and the final text.