The promise that technology—from personal computers to the internet to social media—will democratize society is a recurring ad campaign. While new tech offers democratizing potential, powerful actors and existing structures consistently adapt to re-centralize control and consolidate power.

While the public focuses on AI's potential, a small group of tech leaders is using the current unregulated environment to amass unprecedented power and wealth. The federal government is even blocking state-level regulations, ensuring these few individuals gain extraordinary control.

AI provides a structural advantage to those in power by automating government systems. This allows leaders to bypass the traditional unwieldiness of human bureaucracy, making it trivial for an executive to change AI parameters and instantly exert their will across all levels of government, thereby concentrating power.

A strange dynamic exists where the tech leaders building AI are also the loudest voices warning of its potential to destroy humanity. This dual narrative of immense promise and existential threat serves to centralize their power, positioning them as the only ones who can both create and control this technology.

Just as oil wealth allows elites in some countries to ignore their populations, control over AI could empower a new elite to maintain power without cultivating human productivity, leading to societal decay and loss of democratic legitimacy.

The argument that AI will reduce inequality is flawed because democratizing access to tools doesn't democratize the economics. Technology markets naturally consolidate power and wealth, as seen with search engines and social networks. The financial benefits of AI are likely to concentrate at the top.

Fears of AI power consolidating among a few giants like Google and Nvidia mirror past concerns about companies like Cisco controlling the internet. History shows that all transformative technologies eventually commoditize and diffuse, moving from centralized control to broad, democratized access at the edge.

Unlike previous tech waves, AI's core requirements—massive datasets, capital for compute, and vast distribution—are already controlled by today's largest tech companies. This gives incumbents a powerful advantage, making AI a technology that could sustain their dominance rather than disrupt them.

AI is not inherently centralizing or decentralizing; it's both. It can create the ultimate surveillance state for elite control while also empowering solo entrepreneurs to build multi-million dollar businesses with minimal capital, creating a significant economic paradox.