this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
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I believe BMW and others are already operating humanoid robots that work in a factory setting doing tasks a typical machinist would do right now.
Just imagine in 10+ years when the frontier agent models get optimized enough, or more effectively streamed into the robotics and the robotics are robust enough to handle "heavy lifting" tasks. I don't think there is much some combination of AI and robotics can't do. Other than suffering the soon to come mass poverty.... They'll never be able to do that.
Quite. As soon as robotics and AI reach a point where they can take care physically creating the needs and wants of the uber wealthy... that's bad.
Any time the idea of UBI comes up I think it's way more likely for them to decide 99% of us are now redundant and that some convenient pathogen/disease that they have access to a cure for the rest of the world doesn't know exists would be a fantastic way to get rid of us before we form giant mobs to demand equality. As an added benefit, having ~7.9 billion less humans in the world and no longer needing to produce food or goods for them would reduce pollution and emissions on a massive scale, helping the global environment while also getting rid of all the clutter ruining the views at the nicest beaches.
They'll still need some of us to boss around and feel superior to, not to mention to breed attractive children for their enjoyment. Just a small enough number broken between enough locations on the planet to get the odds of large scale physical resistance as low as they can.
It's literally what I tell my friend who seems to be convinced they'll suddenly be altruistic.... Like dude, you're saying the very same people that fight any form of taxation whatsoever will magically be ok with "giving away" their wealth to people who do no work? They'd rather start a new company to make more money that just films nation wide "bum fights" as they treat us as entertainment, fighting over a chance to eat, than they would give anything for a UBI.
One of the weird things that came out about Covid was that they were doing research on Gain of Function.... actively trying to make the disease more transmissible specifically in humans. That isn't a fantastic line of research.
Knowing that's a thing that large, well funded places are still researching, the idea that a more deadly disease that transmits through humans even easier could be created along with a vaccine to prevent the disease before it ever becomes public is way, way less unrealistic than I wish it were.
A handful of ultra wealthy folk could fully fund that in secret behind strict NDAs very easily. Hell, one of them could. The same people making policies that their AI should sex chat with kids to increase the kids usage time, visiting rape islands, saying only the extremely wealthy should vote... fuck, some of the Epstein files directly involve conversations about that topic. I think that's one of the conversations Bill Gates was part of. How to get rid of poverty in the the world by getting rid of the poor folk.
But you can't even discuss it with most people without seeming like a batshit insane, tinfoil hat conspiracy nut. Bit frustrating.
Developing mass bioweapons to be used on the same planet they need to live on is nothing but pure hubris. Who is to say that the disease won't evolve to be even worse and the vaccine rendered worthless? I wouldn't think they'd necessarily come out ahead if they're forced to quarantine for a long time and rebuild humanity from nothing (assuming they don't die themselves).
But I don't have the kind of ego they do either, so maybe they think they'd be fine either way.
If you haven't read about Zuckerburg's underground bunker, it's like a fully stocked 5,000 sqft mansion. Lots of the billionaires are building underground doomsday mansions lately. Peter Thiel, Bill Gates, and Sam Altman are some of the names I know offhand, but there are reports that many silicon valley executives are doing the same thing.
It wouldn't be a wonderful way to spend the massive amount of time needed for the outside world to recover from nuclear fallout, and they're all building small shelters for individual families and their slaves, not the sort of larger community that would require. On the other hand they would be fantastic places to spend a few short years while an extremely transmissible deadly virus removes the bulk of the redundant humans cluttering up the world. The virus won't be able to live long outside of a human host, so if the transmission and mortality rates are high enough it really wouldn't take all that long for it to be safe to come out from hiding.
The bunkers all have extensive surveillance of the entire above ground region, so even if large scattered patches of humans survive they'll be able to be sure none of them are lurking around before hand.
Plus they've decided it's a great idea to combine AI, drones, and murder, so it's not like they'll be counting on a lot of henchmen with guns who could easily turn on them. AI is currently getting loads of training data right now on how to most accurately target the children in gaza who "look like they could use some food the most" and learning how keeping their center of mass in the happy food scope means they never see that same hungry child again.
Hooray for the future!
The bunkers certainly help them survive a bioweapon pandemic, but then what would be next? Would they have the means to rebuild all of the supply chains in an almost completely automated way? Would they have the means to create new humans in such a way that leaves enough genetic diversity to survive other diseases that will stay in the world?
Of course they could have access to all the technology left over from before the said pandemic, but it doesn't mean much if there aren't enough people/machines to utilize them and keep them fixed. They would have to go without a lot of things like convenient private jet travel and complex manufacturing. This is not even mentioning when the food/medicine inevitably runs out.
This isn't to argue against you, just me wondering if they would take those kinds of risks. IMO they are probably too comfortable with what they have to rebuild everything rather than just capturing current governments and creating corporate dictatorships. If they screw up the former badly enough, we will be extinct after all.
Robotics is catching up to AI. Loads of money is being poured in to improving both of those things, because in order to replace manual human labor they both need to work together.
We're talking about the people who own or run massive companies, with an emphasis on tech sector people focusing R&D on robotics, AI and automation. There are places testing new versions of these things all the time.
And a global pandemic that causes humans to quickly fall sick and die is definitely going to result in infrastructure damage, but odds are it will be mostly vandalism and looting. People would be scared, desperate, and trying to stay alive, they wouldn't be focused on getting together to smash factories and supply chains so that infrastructure can't be used after they die.
As for genetic diversity, I don't honestly think they're making detailedp lans for a century or two for now, but it's possible. There are loads of fertility clinics with eggs and sperm frozen from healthy donors throughout the world already. I saw a story recently where an embryo that had been fertilized over 30 years ago and then frozen was successfully implanted and the baby born healthy.
Plus it's unlikely they wouldn't want a decent number of people to survive throughout the world. It's not nearly as much fun being rich and powerful and part of a small cabal fully controlling the world without servants and lessers to feel superior to, and have to menial or necessary tasks, and torture and rape and all that jazz. If someone funded the creation of a virus like this, along with a cure or innoculation that would keep people from catching it, and they were securely watching what was happening to the world from their comfy bunker... again, tech moguls. It wouldn't be difficult to set up hidden caches of the cure, or even have a signal that would cause fleets of drones to distribute it along with directions for taking it to enough places in the world that enough humans would survive to make survival of the species long term pretty secure while keeping the survivors in small enough groups with enough distance between them to make it very unlikely for an unmanageable number of them to decide to form a mob and hunt down anyone they find in a bunker.
For the rest... solving complex manufacturing, food, medicine, all of it are things genuinely being researched at many well funded places in the world. AI and robotics is the likely thing that will take care of the bulk of it. If you want to go full conspiracy nut you could consider the possibility that all or most of the embarrassing public failures of robots that have been news lately making big companies look stupid were staged entirely to keep people from believing robotics was anywhere near being able to replace us like the dumb billionaires with all their stupid think tanks and NDA secrecy spending trillions on it expect it to.
There are also patents and research into things like 3D printers for chemicals/medicine. Large tanks of hundreds of chemicals needed, the conditions needed for each reaction programmed and monitored, each reaction done in the proper succession to get the desired result someone picked off a menu. I haven't seen anything that would indicate loads of progress... but it's not exactly like Eli Lily and Merck explain how everything they make is done or what they're researching to me. :p
Like... I get it. This sounds like crazy shit. It's a crazy idea. But with the advances in technlogy, financial control, lack of genuine public oversight... it's all pants shittingly terrifyingly possible. Of course there would be a chance it would all go horribly wrong somewhere along the line. But they're also asshats who own prediction markets and make billion/trillion dollar bets on things that could possibly go horribly wrong somehow already.
10% chance humanity pretty much ends.... 90% chance you and your family and kids become virtual Gods on earth, with endless unchallenged access to whatever you want and complete control over the systems that create and maintain everything and the lives of all the little toy humans, able to kill nearly any other human and any animal (or species!) you want. I really don't think anyone should have the power and finances to set that sort of button up, but people do, and they're not the sort of people I'd ever trust to not push it.
(This long, rambling response sponsored by changing ADHD meds yesterday morning. ^^)
I cannot make a response that does yours justice unfortunately, but I'll say that it would surprise me if they had the skills to pull this off smoothly. Looking at Musk and the crazy decisions around AI, it seems like they do get a bit lost and make bad decisions.
Their access to power and technology is very frightening for sure and will do lots of damage. They might seem unstoppable or invincible. But I think they can still screw things up for themselves. There hasn't been an empire that lasted forever, even if everyone is convinced it will be around for 1000 years.
I'm not saying to underestimate them. But they are humans at the end of the day.
Well, hopefully they release the antidote into the population and all take the disease. :)