How the God Complex of 4 Billionaires Could Destroy Society
Author Jonathan Taplin tells The New Abnormal how Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen are providing the tools to let fascism flourish.
Photo Illustration by Erin O'Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
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Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab and author of the new book, The End of Reality: How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto, tells The New Abnormal how the future of our society hinges on the actions of four American billionaires—Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen.
“Elon Musk would like us to give him $10 trillion to go to Mars. Mark Zuckerberg thinks you’re gonna spend seven to eight hours a day with a virtual reality helmet on because you’ll be at home without anything to do. Peter Thiel would like to live to 200 and has got lots of plans for how you can do that. And Marc Andreessen is wanting to sell you an NFT, which as someone noted yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, 95 percent of those holding NFTs that they bought in 2021 are worthless investments today,” Taplin told Andy Levy.
Taplin says he is not calling the four billionaires fascists but says through their work they are creating the conditions under which fascism can flourish.
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“My feeling is that some of these guys think they’re gods,” Taplin said. “I think Elon Musk… thinks that nobody can rule him and his vision of the future is to replace humanity and nature with a machine. I mean, he wants to put a sensor in your brain with Neuralink.
“We have to resist this because the future that [Sam] Altman describes in which the owners of the AI have all the wealth… the largest market capitalization companies in the world are the big tech companies. They have all the wealth and we’re all just, you know, in Blade Runner,” he said.
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