It began, as many profound conversations do, late on a Sunday night here in Pune. What started with a single, provocative thesis about Artificial Intelligence spiraled into an hours-long dialogue that journeyed through economics, technology, power, and philosophy, ultimately arriving at the most fundamental question of all: What does it mean to be human in an age of intelligent machines?
The journey was a dialectic—a dance of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This is the story of that conversation, mapping the evolution of an idea from the systemic to the self.
Act I: The Provocative Thesis – AI as a Communist Agent
The opening salvo was as bold as it was brilliant:
“AI is communist. AI uses capitalism to establish communism. Uses inequality to establish equality.”
The argument was elegant. The hyper-capitalist engine of Silicon Valley, with its astronomical salaries and winner-take-all competition, was used to concentrate the world’s talent and resources. This “inequality” was the fire needed to forge the tool. The “communist” outcome, the argument went, is the tool itself. AI is now with everyone. It has democratized capability on an unprecedented scale. As Andrej Karpathy noted, “The most powerful programming language is now English.” The barriers to creation have fallen.
This was beautifully illustrated with a cultural analogy: AI is like Lord Krishna as Makhan Chor (the butter thief), who “steals” the concentrated wealth (butter) from the rich and distributes it to the common people, creating a playful, disruptive form of equity.
Act II: The Critical Response – The Illusion of a Digital Utopia
As compelling as this felt, a critical analysis of the underlying structure revealed a different story. The term “communism” hinges on one crucial detail: the ownership of the means of production.
The reality is that the means of AI production—the foundational models, the server farms, the proprietary data—are the most privately owned and centralised assets in history. They are the property of a handful of trillion-dollar corporations. This is the antithesis of collective ownership.
The motive, too, diverges from the Krishna analogy. The “free” distribution of these tools is not an act of benevolence but a calculated strategy of Platform Capitalism. It’s a “freemium” model designed for market capture, data harvesting (where we, the users, provide the unpaid labour to improve the product), and the creation of a sales funnel for premium services.
This doesn’t create a classless society. It risks creating a new, steeper class divide: the Owners of the AI models versus the Users.
Act III: The Pivot to the Individual – The Matthew Effect of Agency
The conversation then took its first major turn, shifting from the nature of the system to the nature of the individual user. A crucial insight was introduced: human agency is the variable that changes the equation.
“Data always lags creativity… I can then refine it on my own… It’s not a dependency I carry throughout.”
This reframed AI from a utility one is dependent on (like electricity) to a consultant one hires for a specific task (like LinkedIn Premium for a job search). This led to the synthesis of a powerful new principle:
Technology makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker.
This is a modern take on the Matthew Effect of Agency. For the individual with discipline and clear intent (the “strong”), AI is an exoskeleton for the mind, a tool for growth that amplifies their existing strengths. For the individual lacking purpose or discipline (the “weak”), the same technology becomes a “cage of convenience,” where critical faculties atrophy from disuse, leading to dependency and collapse.
At this point, the stakes were raised. The loss of agency isn’t just a strategic disadvantage; it’s a threat to our very being. Losing authenticity, we concluded, is a form of existential death.
Act IV: The Flaw in the Binary – The Hope of the Catalytic Event
The “strong vs. weak” binary, while a powerful model, felt too rigid. This led to a stunning moment of self-critique:
“But do you really think technology interactions are strictly either growth or decay?… Even a single but crucial interaction could bring profound transformation.”
This shattered the binary. There isn’t just growth (a Gamma process) or decay (an Inverse Gamma process). There is a third, non-linear possibility: the Catalytic Event, or a Phase Transition.
A person on a path of passive decay could stumble upon a single piece of AI-generated art, a line of code, or an idea that awakens a dormant passion. In that instant, their entire trajectory can shift from decay to growth. This single insight became the most powerful argument for universal access, dismantling any paternalistic notion of “protecting” the weak by controlling the technology. We must not deny people access to the fire for fear they might get burned; we must teach them how to harness it.
Act V: The Final Turn – The Rejection of Systems, The Embrace of Self
The final turn in our dialogue was the most profound. After exploring and critiquing various systemic solutions—from communism to benevolent gatekeeping—the very idea of a top-down solution was rejected.
“I think it’s not so easy to ‘create’ conditions of equality… The intention of ‘creating’ something… are essentially the results of an error prone biased measurement process.”
This was the ultimate realisation. All attempts to engineer society are based on flawed models of reality. Having dismantled every external solution, the focus turned inward, arriving at a principle of radical self-responsibility.
“I just need to ensure that I am authentic while interacting with whoever that I come in contact with… Maintaining authenticity in front of powerful people is difficult. But this is what I need and this is truly what is in my hand.”
This was the final destination. The journey that began with analyzing global economic systems ended with the most intimate and controllable variable: one’s own integrity. The practice is not to design a better world, but to be a better, more authentic actor within it. This is a personal Sadhana (a disciplined practice) of living one’s Svadharma (essential nature).
An act of authenticity, especially in the face of power, becomes a catalytic event for others. It changes the world not through grand design, but through quiet resonance.
Conclusion: The Question AI Truly Asks
Our long night’s journey revealed that the most important question about AI is not “Is it communist or capitalist?” The ideologies it wears are secondary. The ultimate question it poses is not to society, but to each of us individually. It looks at us and asks, “With this immense power I offer, who will you choose to become?”
The answer lies not in a system, but in the difficult, daily practice of being relentlessly, courageously, and authentically human.
Reinvent The Self! 