We humans can only drift for so long before we get the itch. Dostoevsky’s Demons is about a group of nihilists who got the itch. They created chaos which demands the maximum of us, and the maximum can lead to a volcanic binary: good or evil, rational or irrational. They managed to burn and murder a small Russian town to build their socialist utopia. Dostoevsky was a prophet. He foresaw the Soviet Union and the sort of chaos-creators who would bring it into being. They weaponized chaos so that they could step into the disorder and assume power. It is also probably true they did it simply because it feels good. 

AI has dropped a black question mark over our immediate future. When billions of people are not kept busy with work and chores, it is legitimate to assume that chaos on a level exceeding anything that has come before is close at hand. This is an opportunity to create chaos of our own accord. To combat the irrational with the rational. To grow green things like figs and cucumbers, to develop non-glowing-screen skills, to build a tribe that meets in flesh and blood reality, to construct a good life no matter what lies on the other side of that black curtain.

The post-human progress of AI is an opportunity to reclaim a pro-human love of life. It can be a renaissance. Or it can be a demonic Dostoevskian dystopia. Some will make themselves victims, others will excel. It is a choice.