What Tech Futurists Get Wrong About Human Autonomy

Divya Siddarth and Kelsie Nabben argue that both AI and blockchain visions of autonomy rest on abstracting away human fallibility, which misunderstands autonomy as something circumscribed by community and existing only through interdependence. AGI narratives seek autonomy of outcome and call for centralized control of data, computing and capital, while blockchain seeks autonomy of process, yet decentralized systems often re-centralize in practice because of commercial forces and high capital entry requirements for on-chain governance. Technical decentralization can easily be confused with democratic decision-making, and frictionless coordination runs counter to the deliberation that political and social concerns require.