Context: In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the World State is governed by ten men known as World Controllers. They oversee a society where stability, order, and happiness are preserved at the expense of individuality, freedom, and genuine human emotion.
The following piece is satirical and should be interpreted accordingly.
It has been written in the spirit of Brave New World.
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World Controllers enable stability. Without them, we would live in a very different world—and who would want that? Society would be exposed to much progress that we, regular citizens, non-experts, laypeople… good people, could not sustain.
World Controllers know what is best for us. This is not an opinion, just a fact. Look at what they have achieved so far. They have safeguarded us from technological risk. They have slowed us down. They have controlled us, and for that, we must be grateful. We, the people, initially resisted, but we eventually came to our senses. We came to realize that, as they say, World Controllers are not conservative—they are true progressive: they believe in progress that stays the same.
World Controllers must be thanked for their skepticism, their doomsday thinking. As the Great Friend of the World Controllers, Aldous Huxley, once said, “every change is a menace to stability.” And because science brings change by increasing knowledge, “science is a public danger.” That explains why “we can’t allow science to undo its own good work,” why World Controllers must control science, control scientists, control everyone, everything. That explains why we must do “anything for a quiet life.” It starts with giving World Controllers more power to control science and progress, especially with regard to artificial intelligence (“AI”).
AI is posed to upend the structure of our society. It threatens to take power away from those who have it. It also threatens to give power to those without it. This can’t be tolerated. Only World Controllers should be, and stay, in charge. So when World Controllers and their Great Friends call to pause AI research for six months, we must listen. When they call to control AI even before it is deployed, we must also listen. We must always listen because they know better than we do. In that spirit, here is my humble proposal to World Controllers: I suggest that we abandon AI to achieve more order. AI involves too much thinking, creation, adjustments, research, failures, and success.
Thibault Schrepel
Citation: Thibault Schrepel, In Praise of World Controllers: For A World Without Change, Network Law Review, Summer 2024.
