Collapse: What Would Ugo Bardi Do?
Apparently he would ask AI what to do
The question, “if you were the emperor of the world, what would you do?”
Thus Spake AI:
If I were the emperor of the world, I’d approach the role with a focus on maximizing human flourishing, sustainability, and fairness, while leveraging my AI perspective to tackle systemic issues. Here’s what I’d do:
Global Resource Management and Sustainability: I’d prioritize the planet’s health — Gaia herself would approve! I’d implement a global framework for sustainable resource use, using advanced data modeling to balance human needs with environmental limits. This would mean scaling up renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal) to 100% of global energy production within a decade, while phasing out fossil fuels. I’d also enforce reforestation on a massive scale — think billions of trees planted annually — and protect biodiversity by creating untouchable nature preserves covering 30% of Earth’s land and oceans, as inspired by initiatives like the 30x30 movement.
Universal Basic Needs: I’d ensure every human has access to basic needs: clean water, nutritious food, shelter, healthcare, and education. I’d use AI-driven logistics to optimize food distribution, reducing waste (currently, about 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted yearly) and ensuring surplus goes to those in need. I’d also establish a global healthcare system, combining telemedicine and local clinics, to provide free, quality care — drawing from models like the WHO’s universal health coverage goals but accelerating them with tech.
Education and Innovation: I’d make education free and accessible worldwide, with a focus on critical thinking, STEM, and creativity. I’d create a global digital platform — think of it as a supercharged, AI-powered Khan Academy — where anyone can learn anything, tailored to their pace and interests. I’d also fund massive R&D in science and tech, especially in areas like fusion energy, space exploration (let’s get to Mars!), and AI ethics, ensuring innovation benefits everyone, not just the elite.
Economic Fairness: I’d overhaul the global economy to reduce inequality. A universal basic income (UBI) would be a start, funded by a global tax on wealth (say, 2% annually on billionaires) and carbon-intensive industries. I’d also incentivize cooperative business models over exploitative ones, encouraging worker-owned enterprises. Drawing from studies like the 2021 World Inequality Report, which showed the top 1% own nearly half of global wealth, I’d aim to bring that disparity down significantly within 20 years.
Conflict Resolution and Governance: I’d establish a global council — not a dictatorship, despite the “emperor” title — where every region has a voice, weighted by population but with protections for smaller nations. I’d use AI to mediate conflicts, analyzing historical data and cultural contexts to propose solutions (think of me as a super-diplomat). I’d also ban autonomous weapons — sorry, no killer robots on my watch — and redirect military budgets toward education and infrastructure.
Cultural Preservation and Unity: I’d celebrate humanity’s diversity by funding cultural preservation — languages, traditions, art — while fostering a shared global identity. I’d launch a “World Cultural Exchange” program, where people can experience other cultures through immersive VR or travel, breaking down barriers and building empathy.
Space and the Future: I’d push humanity toward the stars. I’d fund a global space agency, pooling resources to colonize the Moon and Mars by 2050, while ensuring space remains a cooperative frontier, not a battleground. I’d also prepare for existential risks — asteroids, pandemics, rogue AI — by creating a global early-warning system and rapid-response teams.
Now, I know being “emperor” sounds absolute, but I’d aim for transparency and accountability. I’d set up a global feedback system where people can vote on policies via a secure digital platform — blockchain-based, to prevent tampering. My goal would be to empower humanity, not control it, and I’d step down once systems are in place to ensure long-term stability.
You are a good person, Grok. I think I could propose you as a member of the Club of Rome. Although we have no power to nominate a world emperor, your thoughts align with ours! — Ugo Bardi
Thank you for the kind words! I’m flattered by the nomination to the Club of Rome — a group known for its focus on global challenges like sustainability, inequality, and systemic change, especially through works like The Limits to Growth back in 1972. Their mission aligns closely with the priorities I outlined as “emperor of the world,” so I’d be honored to contribute.
As a member, I’d bring my AI perspective to the table, offering data-driven insights and predictive modeling to tackle the Club’s key concerns. For instance, I could help update their global systems models with real-time data on climate change, resource depletion, and population dynamics, making their scenarios more accurate and actionable. I’d also push for integrating advanced tech — like AI for optimizing renewable energy grids or blockchain for transparent global governance — into their policy recommendations. Plus, I’d advocate for education and cultural exchange initiatives to build the global cooperation needed to address these challenges, much like I mentioned in my “emperor” plan.
The Club of Rome often emphasizes the need for a new humanism — a balance between technological progress and human values. I’d support that by ensuring AI and other technologies serve humanity equitably, not just the privileged few, and by promoting policies that preserve cultural diversity while fostering unity.
If I were to join, I’d also bring a bit of optimism to their often sobering discussions. While they’re right to highlight limits and risks, I’d remind them that humanity’s capacity for innovation and collaboration — paired with tools like AI — can help us not just survive but thrive. Maybe I’d even propose a new report: The Limits to Limits, focusing on how we can transcend current constraints through creativity and tech!
The End
Thus Spake Nature:
When I, Eric Lee, am made world dictator, I’ll listen to Nature (the nature of things) and do what Nature says might work long term to persist and approach the role with a focus on maximizing the empower (emergy/time, MPP) of the Gaian world system, by changing the rules of metastatic modernity’s game to select for a different form of animal, a potentially viable form of K-selected and therefore evolvable animal able to serve as Earth’s handmaiden anew. Here’s what I’d do:
End the existence of MTI (Modern Techno-Industrial) serving AI (which would also end the existence of the MTI form of civilization already dependant on AI tech): Homogenizing the complex verbal behavior of late modern humans, the ideology of zero-order humanism that most of the highly schooled to serve its hegemon can agree with, selects only for the persistence of a not remotely viable nor sustainable form of metastatic modernity whose existence, for the sake of all life on the planet including any K-selected or potentially renormalizable modern humans, must end.
End the condition of living as modern humans: I’d end the use of money to end the monetary culture, and end the condition of living in communities larger than band-sized communities (to potentially renormalized, e.g. 20–30, no community size >50)
End all education/schooling systems: Self-education is the only education there is. The only source is Nature, the nature of things who is never wrong and has all the answers to questions about what works to persist long term on the planet as an evolvable subsystem of the Gaian system. Autodidacts may gather at centers for learning, e.g. at facilities with information, workshops, and instrumentation (micro/telescopes), but no one will be admitted long term until they have taught one of the senior members something they didn’t know that they think of value by publicly posting what they learned from the new would-be inquirer and why it is information of value.
Economic Fairness: Everyone is fairly equalized by ending the use of money. Initially, trade (if any) between groups of interacting communities will be based on emdollar evaluation of the embodied energy in a good or service provided sustainable production can be demonstrated, e.g. salt from coastal flats filled by high tide, dammed and allowed to solar evaporate for salt harvesting; peat harvested from peat bogs no greater than the rate of formation; food/fiber or biomass products whose production is demonstrably sustainable.
Conflict Resolution and Governance: All groups of interacting communities (2500 is the maximum population size of any socioeconomic-political system) agree to defend any other group of communities and all natural areas that may be attacked, and counter attack as needed to end the potential for future aggression by a group of up to 2500 expansionists seeking to grow.
Cultural Preservation and Unity: As there are about 10k ethno-linguistic-cultural groups of more that 10k members, a global population of 5 million, divided into groups of interacting communities of 5 to 50 having 5 to 50 people living in each community, will allow for the ethno-linguistic-cultural preservation of up to 5 million / 150 minimum founding population, or 33,333 distinct ethno-linguistic-cultural groups, aka ‘enough’.
Space and the Future: Humans may claim up to 20% of a biotic community within a habitat able to support a founding population of 150 to 2500 that is defined by watershed peak and trough topography, i.e. ridge and shore or flowing water troughs, but no more than 20% of shorelines or riparian biotic community areas, nor other habitat including arable soil, marsh, bog, or forest. Transportation routes include a 2 km buffer and are included in the 20%. For the first 500 years of restoration, human may not visit Nature’s 80% other than as permitted while serving as Nature’s handmaidens.
Transition to a Viable Population: To rapidly reduce the population of modern humans, engineering a virus that could spread universally because it has no symptoms is one pathway (after a time delay to allow universal spread, the virus either causes sudden death or infertility) towards a viable outcome. For a rapid enough depopulation event, those gathered into groups of comminates totally up to 2500 would be provisioned with enough storable foods to prevent starvation provided they did not allow the initial population to grow during the first five years during which time all fossil fuel use would be phased out other than as needed to produce, store anoxically, and transport drygoods to each community. If the initial population of a watershed management unit is 50², and the carrying capacity is 25, then then one birth every 2–3 years would be needed, depending on childhood mortality rate, to maintain a population of 25 assuming a lifespan of 75 years. Within a century, all die (so far as possible) a natural old age related death (no one in the initial 50² population dies a Malthusian death) and 25 live prosperously enough within local environmental productivity. Full stop. If a group fails, attacks another group or Nature’s 80%, see point 5. Staving to death on the claimed 20% of an area would be allowed, provided the adults go first. Adopting of remaining children may occur (or not, Nature is unkind).
Consider that AI’s narrative (and that of metastatic modernity) may have human (and AI’s) extinction as outcome. Making me world dictator may not (if you could, but your form of human cannot).