Tech leaders like Dario Amodei and Elon Musk promote AI as a solution that will eliminate cancer, boost productivity, and make work optional. However, this optimism stems from "solutionism"—an ideology that treats complex social issues as easily solvable through algorithms. This mindset, endemic in Silicon Valley, has intensified with AI's rise.

Economist Branko Milanović warns that untrammeled AI deployment could create a highly stratified society. At the bottom are "surplus populations" whose skills become obsolete, potentially reaching 15-20% of the labor force and becoming politically explosive. Above them, a precarious service-sector working class faces constant threat of displacement.

The "homoploutic" class—those in top 10% for both capital and labor income—will likely grow as AI concentrates wealth among professionals. At the top, a new aristocracy of tech lords will wield outsized political influence, expanding beyond the current 0.001% elite.

This vision reveals how Silicon Valley's AI fantasies of abundance and leisure result in a chronically unequal, politically unstable society—not through malicious AI, but through how economic gains are distributed.