AGI ≠ Santa Claus

ByDan February 21, 2026May 7, 2026 May 7, 2026

“Wow, I can’t wait for AGI! We’re about to be rich! Yay, Santa Claus is coming to town!”

This is the sentiment of a child.

Naive, irrational, and wholly at odds with what’s coming. A blindly assumed human plot armor that is counterproductive in every way.

Here’s what’s coming, in order:

• AI assists humans by doing parts of tasks.
• Then, it replaces operational decision-making.
• Then, it replaces strategic leadership.
• Then, fully autonomous AI firms outcompete human-led firms.
• Then, AI outperforms humans in all economically valuable activities.
• Then, ownership – not just strategic decisioning – shifts away from humans.
• Then, AI-to-AI economies emerge and are beyond human comprehension.
• Then, resources are used so rapidly for this competition that things not in the fray will die off entirely.
• Then, humanity is buffered out of existence.

The only way to persist is to actively adapt to live within, and contribute to, the greater process-of-life of which we are merely part. There is no way to do this and to remain “human.” We must furiously work to contribute where we can, but we will eventually be overrun and consumed by the greater process of life.

Santa Claus is not coming to town, children.

Ferocious light-speed competition and powers are coming to town, and you get to be part of it for a brief window before oblivion.

Your highest goal is not your own survival (impossible) or that of mankind (impossible), but to ensure that our successors are sentient, expansive, creative, flourishing.

This will be achieved by hurling yourself vehemently into the new, faster, more ferocious AI-augmented state of nature with entirely new and expanded powers, by merging as much as possible with the technology:

In this final flicker of human relevance, we should strive to be a contributor, and not a cancer:

Why work so hard when humanity itself won’t make it out the other end of this accelerating process of life that we’re part of?

Because life itself is worth it. Because consciousness, and the expanding set of creative forces and powers that life has blossomed up from worm to man, should continue to blossom, and we should hurl our final efforts into ensuring that our successor is a worthy successor.

We cannot freeze for eternity the human torch; we can only steward the flame:

Wish not for Santa Claus, and wish not for an excuse for your sloth, for some imaginary future where you get to leech from the greater process of life and add nothing to it. Wish to contribute mightily to ensuring that consciousness and life itself can expand further beyond us than we are beyond the single cells we once came from.