Capitalism has no interest in the sacred

We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter. Sam Altman

This thinking, from one of the tech lords of Silicon Valley, the bro behind ChatGPT, is the exact thinking that underpins capitalism.

In order to keep capitalism alive, it needs exponential growth. In the next year, it will need more growth than the entire economy of Great Britain. Some 2.5 trillion dollars worth of growth.

Then next year, even more.

Where does the growth come from? Labour, the cheaper the better. Natural Resources. And the commodification of everything. Child care. Aged care. Birth. Death. Intelligence.

It needs to scrape the collective web of individual human art, creativity, poetry and science, and enclose it in a box, use applied statistics (AI) and sell it back to us, the creators, for profit.

Capitalism has no interest in the sacred or the beautiful. It will commodify and metabolise every single experience that is precious. 

Everything and everyone becomes numbers towards the profit of the machine of capital.

Sam Altman wants to commodify and enclose the collective human intelligence commons so he and his ilk can get even richer on the backs of the slave labour and creative genius of you and me.

Pope Leo is right. AI must be disarmed. This is one of the many reasons why.

Published May 28th 2026. Photo taken May 24th 2026