A hip bar in San Francisco, the sun is setting outside, inside there are five people sitting at a long wooden table in dim light. Cocktails start at $17, whiskey costs twice as much, the bill will later be $323, with a 20 percent tip on top. Some of those present earn more in an hour.
Except for the reporter, everyone does something with tech. Two work for large corporations in Silicon Valley, one invests money in start-ups, and the fourth founded a company. Artificial intelligence, of course. Women are missing from the group. The conversation revolves around Dreamforce, a large tech conference that has tens of thousands of people from the industry in the city.
The longer the evening lasts, the darker the topics become. From the alleged decline of San Francisco to the alleged decline of the USA to the climate crisis, which no one here can overlook. Dozens of forest fires are once again blazing in Northern California, a highway was closed, and the founder had to postpone his short vacation. “Annoying, but I’m not worried in the long term,” he says as he waves to the waitress. “Technology will solve the problem. AI can help us with almost everything, the future is bright.” Nobody objects.
One could dismiss this as the isolated opinion of a tech utopian, a caricature of the belief in progress that has made Silicon Valley the place where young men become billionaires and change the world, for better or for worse. That would be negligent. What the founder says on this September evening doesn’t just go unchallenged in the bar. Many people who are currently researching and developing AI or investing billions of dollars in start-ups share his assessment. They are convinced that technology will save humanity.
A manifesto for disciples of technology
Exactly one month later, on October 16th, a text appears on a16z.com that is at least as cryptic as the name of the website. The “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” consists of 30,000 characters, quotes philosophers and idiots, reads like a manic stream of consciousness and contains at least as many inconsistencies like subheadings (15). There is a lot to be said for ignoring the confusing torrent of words. One thing speaks against it: the sender.
a16z stands for the investment company Andreessen Horowitz, which has stakes in Facebook, Twitter and Airbnb, among others. Co-founder Marc Andreessen, the author of the pamphlet, is one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley. He decides where billions of dollars in venture capital flow. Andreessen says what many founders think – or at least what they should say to get his money. The manifesto describes an ideology shared by some of the world’s richest and most powerful people. So it’s worth taking a closer look.
Twelve years ago Andreessen wrote the essay “Why Software Is Eating the World“precise and almost prophetic technological developments. This was followed”It’s Time to Build” and “Why AI Will Save the World“, arguments and analyzes became claims and sermons. Andreessen’s current work will not convince anyone who doubts his promise of salvation. That’s not what it’s intended for. He wants to gather followers around him, sharpen the fronts, it’s about us against them Tech believers versus non-believers.
The “enemies” are sustainability or social responsibility
What begins as a paean to progress, free markets and capitalism, quickly takes on delusional traits. “We had a problem with isolation, so we invented the Internet.” Never before have so many people been lonely and socially isolated. “We have a poverty problem, so we invent technologies to create abundance.” Andreessen’s fortune is estimated at $1.8 billion, and more than 700 million people are hungry. “We believe that artificial intelligence is best viewed as a universal problem solver.” In a bar in San Francisco, some people would have clapped.
You have to give people the freedom to make their own decisions. This apparently only applies as long as they choose the right worldview, Andreessen’s worldview. Because doubters threaten the approaching salvation through technology, the “enemies” are concepts such as sustainability, social responsibility or tech ethics. Anyone who opposes progress is guilty. “Deaths that could have been avoided by AI, whose existence was prevented, are a form of murder.”
Andreessen names the Italian fascist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and the British philosopher Nick Land, a supporter of eugenics, as the “patron saints of techno-optimism.” And two pseudonymous Twitter… sorry, X accounts: @BasedBeffJezos and @bayeslord. Both mark their accounts with an abbreviation that Andreessen also mentions in his biography on X: e/acc.
A religion disguised as technocracy
It is Effective accelerationism, a mindset that has been spreading in certain Silicon Valley circles for years. Its supporters are convinced that standing still leads directly to ruin. Humanity must evolve to survive, the faster the better, and technology is the engine. You just shouldn’t allow yourself to be slowed down and use less energy, because the future brings unlimited resources.
The Earth is doomed anyway, so people would just have to populate Mars. In the end, the technological singularity awaits, artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence, machines and people will merge into a higher, transhumanistic form of existence.
If you believe the proponents of effective accelerationism, then it is not an ideology, for them it is the mere recognition of the truth. Andreessen writes that free markets are morally superior because they prevent people from forming religions. People don’t believe in utopias or the apocalypse.
He and his supporters preach exactly that: a religion disguised as a technocracy that oscillates between redemption fantasies and doomsday scenarios and worships a god that Andreessen himself names: “We believe that artificial intelligence is our alchemy, our philosopher’s stone – we literally bring it Sand for thinking.”
“Aren’t you afraid of malicious AI?”
Of all people who consider themselves hyper-rational, sound like priests and shamans. This is only a contradiction at first glance. “Religion and technology have been closely intertwined for centuries,” says religious scholar Robert Geraci. In his book “The Religion of Technology”, the historian David Noble describes how the idea arose in the Middle Ages that the supposedly impending apocalypse could be prevented through technological progress. were monks Developers and inventorssome even refer to the Catholic Church as Silicon Valley of the Middle Ages.
The parallels are also noticeable to some people who work on AI themselves, such as Jack Clark, co-founder of the AI company Anthropic, in which Google and Amazon have invested billions. In the spring, he wrote on AGI stands for Artificial General Intelligence, i.e. the idea of an AI that is cognitively and intellectually superior to humans.
This is where Andreessen and other accelerationists differ from many AI believers. Some believe that unbridled progress is absolutely desirable, while others warn that intelligent machines could wipe out humanity. One of these admonishers is sitting at the table in the bar in San Francisco; he leads a marketing team at a tech company. After the founder orders his whiskey, twelve-year-old Yamazaki, $40 a glass, the manager asks him: “Aren’t you afraid of malicious AI?”
It quickly becomes clear that the two only differ in nuances. The founder focuses on the opportunities, the manager fears existential risks, but both agree that truly intelligent machines are only a matter of time. In the end, the potential is too great to stop the development of the technology. “We believe that any slowdown in AI will cost lives,” writes Andreessen.
Regulation saves lives
Belief in progress and optimism are not a problem; religion can also give people support. But the boundaries between belief, whether in technology or a God, and zeal are fluid. The problem with people like Andreessen is their hubris, they believe they are infallible and despise everyone who stands in their way. Compromises? Unnecessary. Regulation? Dangerous. Democracy? Please only if the state stays out of anything that could slow down progress.
This is forgotten by history. When seat belt requirements were introduced in road traffic in the 1970s, manufacturers and drivers protested against the alleged encroachment on freedom. Since then, harnesses have saved more than a million lives. Free markets don’t regulate themselves, and the more powerful the technology, the more important regulation becomes. Because contrary to what Andreessen claims, technology is never neutral, its consequences are always social and political.
The correct response to his techno-optimist manifesto is not pessimism but pragmatism. The Luddites, who are wrongly considered reactionary and anti-technology, can serve as a role model. 200 years ago, they did not oppose technological progress, but rather protested against industrialists exploiting workers.
That’s what’s needed today too: not resistance to AI, but resistance to guys like Marc Andreessen who believe that there is only one solution to all the risks and side effects of technology – more technology.