If there's a company with an insanely high valuation, and two potential motives consistent with their actions, one altruistic and one greedy, I'm struggling to understand why the assumption would be altruism, rather than the overwhelmingly more common primary motivation of "we want to make a boatload of money" while finding it useful to pretend otherwise, especially when so many sizable investors have similar sizable expectations for their returns.

Reducing the cost of a desirable service or product often has a tendency to increased demand for that service or product, and means customers have more capital available to purchase other products and services increasing demand for those. These factors are significant drivers of overall economic growth.

Of course economic growth has it's own problems in terms of ecological impact and such, but if you want to reduce ecological impact you still need to improve productivity. It's a matter of how you spend that efficiency improvement as a society.

Yeah, I'm not convinced either. I'm just saying that's what I think the AI labs believe.

Whole point is that billiinares already have whatever they want without any meaningul control from society.

Humans serve them well enough and relatively easy to control. Robot utopia is not guatanteed and have own risks.

And fortunatelly in a group of AI overlords everyone except of Musk is pretty sane.

Just a few tens of thousands to entertain them, including kids for their "islands", would be enough.

    "I propose something different. Listen, my dear enemy... I shall acquire absolute power on earth. Not a single chimney will smoke unless I order it, not a single ship will leave harbour, not a single hammer will strike. Everything will be subordinated — up to and including the right to breathe — to the centre, and I am in the centre. Everything belongs to me. I shall engrave my profile on one side of little metal discs — with my beard and wearing a crown — and on the other side the profile of Madame Lamolle. Then I shall select the 'first thousand,' let us call them, although there will be something like two or three million pairs. They will be the patricians. They will devote themselves to the higher enjoyments and to creative activities. Taking an example from ancient Sparta we shall establish a special regimen for them so that they do not degenerate into alcoholics and impotents. Then we shall determine the exact number of hands necessary to give full service to the culture. In this case, too, we shall resort to selection. These we shall call, for the sake of politeness, the toilers—"

    "It goes without saying—"

    "You may laugh, my friend, when we get to the end of this conversation... They will not revolt, oh, no, my dear comrade. The possibility of revolution will be destroyed at the very root. A minor operation will be carried out on every toiler after he has qualified at some skill and before he is issued a labour pass. Quite an unnoticeable operation made under almost accidental anaesthesia... Just a small perforation of the skull. He will get a bit dizzy and when he wakes up he will be a slave. Lastly, there will be a special group that we shall isolate on a beautiful island for breeding purposes. All those left over we shall have to get rid of as useless.

    "There you have the structure of the future mankind according to Pyotr Garin. The toilers will toil and serve uncomplainingly, like horses, for their food. They will no longer be people and they will have no worries except hunger. They will find happiness in the digestion of their food. The elite, the patricians, they will be demigods. Although I despise people altogether, it is always pleasant to be in good company. I assure you, my friend, we shall enjoy the golden age the poets dream of. The impression of the horrors created by purging the earth of its surplus population will soon be forgotten. On the other hand, what opportunities for a genius!

    "The earth will become the Garden of Eden. Births will be regulated. There will be selection of the fittest. There will be no struggle for existence, that will be lost in the haze of the barbaric past. A beautiful and refined race will develop, with new organs of thought and sensation. Communism trying to drag all of humanity to the heights of culture? I instead will do it in ten years... What the hell! In less than ten years! For only a few, true... But then, it is not a question of numbers."

    "A fascist Utopia, rather curious," said Shelga. "Have you told Rolling anything about this?"

    "It is not a Utopia, that's the funny part of it. I am only logical."

Well, what was considered reasonable enough to state outright in 1906 or in 1926, is not quite polite to say out loud in 2026, but I don't think the sentiment of contempt has ever quite gone away entirely.