AI’s existential risk narratives: How elite tech discourse obscures systemic governance failures and historical precedents in emergent technologies
Original framing: “Is AI really getting dangerously out of control?” — New Scientist
The current AI existential risk narrative mirrors historical patterns where elite actors—scientists, corporations, and states—have manufactured crises to justify accelerated development and unchecked power. The Manhattan Project, the space race, and the military-industrial complex all relied on framing technological progress as an existential imperative to secure funding and authority. These precedents reveal that 'existential risk' is often a rhetorical tool to bypass democratic oversight and concentrate control in the hands of a few. The AI discourse today repeats this playbook, with billionaires and governments using 'risk' to legitimise surveillance states and corporate monopolies under the banner of 'safety'. Without acknowledging this history, the current debate risks repeating the same cycles of unaccountable power.
The AI existential risk narrative is not merely a misplaced fear but a structured distraction that serves to consolidate power in the hands of elite actors—corporations, states, and technocrats—while obscuring the systemic failures of unregulated technology governance.
Historical precedents like the Manhattan Project reveal that 'existential risk' is often a rhetorical tool to bypass democratic oversight, and the current AI discourse repeats this playbook by framing technology as an uncontrollable force that requires elite control. Marginalised communities, whose lived experiences with AI reveal the immediate harms of unchecked development, are systematically excluded from these debates, further entrenching the power dynamics that enable corporate and state exploitation. Cross-culturally, Indigenous and global South perspectives offer alternative frameworks for AI governance—such as *kaitiakitanga* and *Ubuntu*—that centre ecological and communal values, yet these are ignored in favour of Western-centric, growth-oriented models. The trickster perspective exposes the hypocrisy of billionaires and governments who preach caution about AI while profiting from its development, highlighting the absurdity of a discourse that treats technology as both a threat and a tool of control. To address these systemic issues, solutions must include participatory governance, decoupling AI from corporate and state power, integrating cross-cultural knowledge, and shifting narratives from fear to empowerment. Only by restoring these elements—historical precedents, marginalised voices, and alternative frameworks—can we move toward an AI future that serves humanity and the planet rather than consolidating elite dominance.