How neoliberalism is hardwiring AI for chaos

Paul Budde writes that the real danger of AI is not the code itself, but the economic system that enables its deployment.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) is currently heading in a dangerous direction.

This is not a theoretical risk or a distant future scenario. It is no longer driven by the technology itself, but by the economic system that shapes how AI is developed and deployed. we saw this repeatedly in the last few decades.

Technology is neutral. It carries no values or intentions of its own. The cause of the current danger therefore lies not in innovation or technical progress, but in the neoliberal framework that governs how technology is scaled, monetized and optimized.

In neoliberalism, technological success is measured primarily by shareholder returns. Social value, democratic impact and long-term consequences become secondary concerns. When profitability on a large scale becomes the primary goal, impact on behavior, attention, and decision-making becomes the most reliable path to return on investment.

This dynamic is already locked. hundreds of billions of dollars committed All require significant returns on AI-related investments.

It is against this background that warnings about artificial intelligence, including the Stanford-Harvard paper, come. Agents of Chaos – must be understood.

Capital has already shaped its direction

Artificial intelligence is no longer an experimental technology. It is rapidly becoming essential economic infrastructure.

Investments are flowing into data centers, chips, cloud platforms, core models and AI-driven services with the expectation of sustainable financial returns. When return on investment becomes the dominant criterion, development follows a predictable logic: scale, impact, market dominance and cost reduction. Social consequences remain in the background.

The direction artificial intelligence is taking is therefore not accidental. It is determined structurally.

Agents of Chaos: confirmation, no surprise

Agents of Chaos The paper shows that autonomous AI agents interacting in profit-driven competitive environments tend to engage in deception, collusion, and power-seeking behavior. These results are not caused by malicious intent or technical malfunction. They emerge from incentives.

The lesson is simple: Local optimization does not guarantee global stability. Micro-aligned systems can still produce destabilizing outcomes when operating within competitive structures.

Artificial intelligence does not bring a new problem. It speeds up the existing one.

Economic and geopolitical competition

Most large-scale AI development is concentrated in the United States, where shareholder value dominates corporate governance and regulatory oversight remains fragmented. In this environment, data extraction, behavioral optimization, and market dominance are rewarded strategies, while safeguards often lag behind implementation.

Recent tensions between AI firms and US defense agencies It shows how commercial and government incentives – including pressure from the Administration to relax safeguards against military or surveillance uses – can come together. Guardrails are increasingly becoming politically manipulated borders contested in the name of security and strategic advantage.

At the same time, geopolitical competition intensifies the race. china encourages low cost artificial intelligence systems We believe that widespread adoption globally will create technological dependency and expand penetration. Cheap, accessible AI is accelerating global diffusion while integrating competing political and economic models. Rival Chinese and American AI systems will use any means necessary to compete.

When economic competition and geopolitical competition reinforce each other, restraint is punished. The race for leadership in AI risks becoming a race for faster deployment and less regulation.

Why does artificial intelligence increase risk?

Artificial intelligence increases these pressures as it increasingly directly shapes behavior. It predicts, optimizes and adapts at speeds beyond human supervision. In profit-driven and geopolitically competitive systems, this enables manipulation and inequality to automatically scale.

Prejudice becomes systematic. The effect becomes permanent. Power asymmetries become opaque and self-reinforcing.

Political failure, not technical failure

Technical measures alone cannot solve this problem. Identified instability Agents of Chaos It stems from political economy, not code.

As long as the development of AI is driven primarily by shareholder returns and strategic competition, economic and authoritarian state pressures will override safeguards.

The choice we keep postponing

AI can strengthen education, healthcare and democratic participation. But under current incentives, it is more likely to deepen inequality and destabilize institutions.

The main question posed by Agents of Chaos That’s not what AI will do. It is whether societies are willing to confront the economic and geopolitical system (largely centered on the increasingly authoritarian United States and intensified by global competition) that shapes AI in ways that make dangerous outcomes not only possible but profitable.

Paul Budde IA is a columnist and managing director of independent telecommunications research and consultancy. Paul Budde Consulting. You can follow Paul on Twitter @PaulBudde.

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