OpenAI launches Intelligence Age, a new blog from its Strategic Futures team, exploring how transformative AI could reshape power, governance, the economy, and individual freedom. The team’s central question: how should free society be restructured to preserve individual rights and agency amid the rise of advanced AI? They frame this as a concentration of power risk—arguing it may be the largest, most serious, and most conceptually challenging AI safety issue. Drawing on historical foundations, they note that political and military power has long relied on human labor, taxation, and popular consent, as David Hume observed: leaders depend on public opinion.

But advances in autonomous systems and machine intelligence could allow states to project force and collect revenue without human cooperation—potentially automating bureaucracy and undermining the societal bargain that sustains democracy. This shift risks leaving people with little or no seat at the table, even if voting continues. The blog warns that no technological progress justifies sacrificing long-term autonomy, echoing James Madison’s warning that 'parchment barriers' are insufficient against tyranny.

Intelligence Age aims to address these structural threats to freedom before they become irreversible.