/Tech4h ago

Séb Krier and Google DeepMind's Haydn Belfield argue post-AGI political economy is an understudied research field

Risks include human obsolescence and global anti-AGI degrowth.

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MTS@MTSlive

SITUATION EXPLAINED: Post-AGI political economy is the most underrated field of study in the world right now.

• The question: assume we have actual superintelligence that can automate labor and act agentically in the real world. Now what does the political economy look like? • Three biggest threats: AI extinction (the Yudkowsky scenario), gradual disempowerment (humans become economically obsolete through normal selection pressures), and Butlerian Jihad (a global degrowth regime where nobody gets AGI) • The people actually working on this: Seb Krier at Google DeepMind, Richard Ngo, the Forethought Institute (Tom Davidson and Will MacAskill), Joe Carlsmith at Anthropic, Nick Bostrom • It's like trying to predict the political economy of the Industrial Revolution before it happened, the best person who tried was Karl Marx, and we know how that went

@theojaffee: "Nobody is thinking about this. I'm really surprised by how few people are seriously thinking about this."

Theo Jaffee@theojaffee

Post-AGI political economy is easily the most underrated field of study in the world right now by far

2:43 PM · Jun 29, 2026 · 7.5K Views

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Haydn Belfield@HaydnBelfield

MTS@MTSlive

SITUATION EXPLAINED: Post-AGI political economy is the most underrated field of study in the world right now.

@theojaffee: "Nobody is thinking about this. I'm really surprised by how few people are seriously thinking about this."

4h39770

LIKES13REPLIES2

Séb Krier@sebkrier

@HaydnBelfield we should pause recursive seb-improvement

3h26013

Ellipsis Macintosh@ProNaif

@MTSlive No one knows how that went because they aren't being taught. Anthropic is run by Marxists. Also, Marx was not a priori but a reaction to the Great Hunger in Ireland... and not a good person

4h2092

VictorGallagher@VictorGall6791

@ProNaif @MTSlive Everybody seems to have forgotten about the Irish and German famines of that time period.

3h91

alan ⚡💵@0xalank

@MTSlive Energy will be money

Fiat disappears when everything is based on compute and intelligence

2h512

rizwan@rk51787

@MTSlive you guys should invite @EMostaque to discuss this

4h1421

Anti-UNATCO Aktion@new2posting

@GarrisonLovely Keep in mind that this guy blamed Do-Gooder Progressive Regulators™️ in the Trump Admin(!) as the reason why GPT-5.6's public release was delayed, despite all evidence to the contrary

1h611

mc lumps ⏹️❗️ 🔨⏱️@lumpenspace

@sebkrier @HaydnBelfield i still keep my stock from your first days at deepmind 😌 i can wait

2h371

Jason傑森 🇭🇰 | 🛠️@cheuk_baby

@MTSlive 这个角度好冷门的说反正是想不动

3h58

Ellipsis Macintosh@ProNaif

@VictorGall6791 @MTSlive It's literally the origin story my mom taught me growing up so... Marx is their saint so thou dothsn't contextualize him. He was at least a reaction at the right scale tho bc that kind of shit had never happened before. Irish population didn't recover until 20 years ago.

3h101

&&&@BLepine17184

@sebkrier @HaydnBelfield counterpoint: Coasian Seb markets

3h71

BlackieThunders@xOneTrackMind

@MTSlive i bet @DaveShapi can carve out some time to talk!

3h7