THE 99.999% - An AI vision for everyone else
Version 0.1 — 15 October 2026
Conceived during a walk in the French Alps.
Introduction
We have an extraordinary opportunity.
For the first time in history, humanity may possess the intelligence, technology and resources to create a world in which every person can live well, without unnecessary suffering, and in which the natural world can flourish alongside us.
Yet we’re approaching this possibility as another competition. Nations race for technological supremacy. Corporations compete for ownership. Governments seek control. Wealth and power accumulate in fewer hands.
We’re developing technologies that could transform life on Earth while remaining trapped in political and economic structures built around competition, scarcity and domination.
Perhaps we need to reconsider what we’re trying to achieve.
I believe most human beings want remarkably similar things. We want to live safely, love and be loved, enjoy our lives, raise our families, explore our interests and feel connected to something beyond ourselves.
We don’t need to agree on everything. Our differences are part of what makes life wonderful.
We need a shared understanding of what matters, a way to cooperate without surrendering our individuality, and institutions that serve life rather than control it.
These are some principles for getting there.
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- All Human Beings Are Equal
I have never considered myself inherently better or worse, more or less deserving, than any other human being.
A child growing up in poverty has the same fundamental worth as a king. A Chinese farmer is no less deserving of happiness than an American billionaire. Being British doesn’t make me superior to someone who happens to be French.
I’ve travelled extensively over fifty years and encountered people from many cultures, countries and circumstances. Individuals can be extraordinarily different, but I’ve found nothing that persuades me one group of human beings is fundamentally worth more than another.
People are generally kind. They want to help one another. They can also be fearful, selfish, suspicious and cruel. These characteristics aren’t confined to particular nations, races or religions.
I naturally prioritise my family and friends. I love them. We depend on one another. I can make a direct difference to their lives.
But loving my family more doesn’t mean believing their lives are worth more.
There is a difference between the people for whom we have particular responsibilities and the people whose lives we consider valuable.
My responsibilities begin close to home. My concern extends to everyone.
- Power Must Serve People
Human beings have organised themselves into nations, governments, corporations and other institutions. These structures can help us cooperate, but they also concentrate power.
And power has a tendency to protect itself.
Political leaders compete for influence. Nations compete for military and economic supremacy. Corporations compete for market dominance. Those who succeed gain the means to extend their advantage.
The resulting competition is often presented as being in everyone’s interests.
Consider the race between America and China to develop artificial intelligence.
We’re told that one side must win because the consequences of the other winning would be disastrous.
But what does winning mean?
If America develops the world’s most powerful AI, does that necessarily improve the lives of ordinary Americans? Does it improve the lives of people elsewhere? Or does it primarily strengthen the institutions that control it?
The same questions apply to China.
I don’t believe ordinary Chinese and American people are natural enemies. Most want similar things from life.
Their governments may have competing ambitions, but those ambitions shouldn’t be confused with the interests of humanity.
Power is useful when it helps people live well. It becomes dangerous when its preservation becomes an end in itself.
- Institutions Cannot Be Trusted Unconditionally
We shouldn’t assume that governments, corporations and media organisations will act in humanity’s collective interests.
This isn’t necessarily because the people working within them are bad.
It’s because institutions operate according to incentives.
Corporations are rewarded for financial performance. Governments must maintain political authority and protect national interests. Media businesses compete for attention, influence and revenue.
These incentives can produce valuable outcomes. They can also conflict with the wellbeing of people and the planet.
We already see wealthy individuals preparing private escapes from shared problems: bunkers, fortified compounds, superyachts and fantasies of leaving Earth.
We see governments responding to insecurity with nationalism, stronger borders and promises of protection from outsiders.
These responses share a troubling assumption: when things become difficult, protect your own.
That may be understandable at the level of an individual family. As a guiding principle for civilisation, it is disastrous.
We inhabit one planet. Our greatest challenges cannot be solved by retreating behind walls.
Institutions should be judged by what they achieve for life, not by their ability to preserve themselves.
- Freedom Requires Shared Principles
Simply overthrowing existing power structures isn’t a solution.
History offers plenty of examples of revolutions that replaced one ruling elite with another.
Nor is the abolition of government an obvious answer. Without shared rules, power doesn’t disappear. It can simply pass to whoever is strongest, wealthiest or most willing to use violence.
Civilisation requires cooperation, trust and some form of collective agreement.
But that needn’t mean conformity.
People should be free to live differently, hold different beliefs, pursue different interests and express themselves in different ways.
We could agree on a relatively small number of fundamental principles: equal human worth, freedom, mutual respect, responsibility towards others and the prevention of unnecessary suffering.
Beyond those foundations, diversity should be encouraged.
I don’t want a world in which everyone thinks alike.
I want one in which people can be wonderfully different without threatening one another.
- Educate Citizens of the Planet
Much of our education is organised around national identity.
British children learn British history. French children learn French history. Americans learn the story of the United States.
Understanding our histories and cultures is valuable. But national education can also encourage the belief that our country is somehow exceptional, superior or destined to prevail over others.
I’d like to see education organised around two complementary identities.
We are local citizens.
We belong to families, villages, towns and communities. We have responsibilities to our neighbours and opportunities to contribute directly to the places where we live.
We are planetary citizens.
We share one world, one biosphere and a finite collection of natural resources. Our actions affect people and ecosystems far beyond our immediate surroundings.
Education should help us understand both.
We should learn the history of humanity, not simply the history of our nation. We should understand the natural systems that sustain us and the extraordinary diversity of life.
We should learn how to cooperate, resolve disagreements, question authority and participate in collective decisions.
National cultures needn’t disappear. They can be celebrated without being elevated above others.
Belonging somewhere shouldn’t require believing ourselves superior to people elsewhere.
- Communication Should Connect Us
Humanity has never had such powerful tools for communication.
Yet our information systems frequently reward division.
Commercial media competes for attention. Political media seeks influence. Social platforms optimise for engagement, often rewarding outrage, conflict and emotionally charged content.
Ownership can concentrate editorial power. Algorithms can amplify fear and hostility without anyone explicitly intending that outcome.
The result is a distorted picture of humanity.
We encounter endless evidence of disagreement, danger and hostility, while ordinary cooperation and kindness attract comparatively little attention.
We need communication systems designed to help people understand one another and the world they inhabit.
They should make reliable information accessible, expose manipulation, encourage curiosity and allow different perspectives to coexist.
They should help us distinguish genuine disagreements from conflicts manufactured or exaggerated for attention.
Freedom of expression remains essential. So does the ability to challenge powerful institutions, including whatever replaces today’s media.
The objective is not a single approved narrative.
It’s a better-informed humanity, capable of thinking for itself.
- Governance Should Begin With People
I find myself returning to the idea of collectivism.
Not the authoritarian states that claimed to practise it, but the underlying possibility that people could organise society around shared wellbeing rather than endless competition.
A small community can cooperate directly. People know one another, understand their needs and negotiate solutions.
At the scale of millions or billions, that becomes much harder.
Administration expands. Decisions become remote. Bureaucracies develop their own interests. Power concentrates.
Attempts to organise entire societies through centralised planning have demonstrated how catastrophic these failures can become, particularly when combined with coercion and unaccountable leadership.
But perhaps the problem isn’t collective ambition itself.
Perhaps it’s the way we’ve tried to organise it.
Modern technology offers possibilities that didn’t exist when those systems were developed.
We could create ways for people to express their needs, deliberate, coordinate resources and participate in decisions across enormous populations.
Power could begin locally, where people understand their circumstances, and extend upwards only when coordination is necessary.
The Swiss tradition of local participation and federalism offers some useful inspiration.
Regional, national and global institutions would still have important functions, but their authority would need to remain accountable to the people and communities they serve.
The ambition is collective self-governance without an all-powerful centre.
- Wisdom Matters More Than Intelligence
We’re building increasingly intelligent machines.
They can process information, identify patterns, solve problems and make predictions at extraordinary speed.
But intelligence alone doesn’t tell us what matters.
A machine might discover the most efficient way to produce food without understanding why a shared meal matters.
It might optimise a city for productivity without understanding the pleasure of wandering through it.
It might maximise economic output while diminishing the experiences that make life worth living.
We need to distinguish intelligence from wisdom.
Wisdom involves understanding consequences, recognising what we value, exercising judgement and appreciating the complexity of life.
It draws on knowledge, but also experience, emotion, relationships and reflection.
We have accumulated extraordinary scientific knowledge. We have also accumulated thousands of years of philosophical, cultural, spiritual and practical understanding.
And there’s much we can learn from the natural world.
Plants, fungi, animals and ecosystems demonstrate remarkable forms of adaptation, cooperation, interdependence and resilience.
We shouldn’t pretend these systems possess human wisdom. We should recognise that human intelligence is not the only source of insight into how life works.
If AI is to help guide our future, we need to give serious attention to the wisdom informing its objectives.
That requires more than feeding it information.
It requires humanity to examine what we value, why we value it and what kind of existence we wish to create.
Perhaps discovering our collective wisdom will prove more important than developing ever-greater intelligence.
- Resilience Begins Locally
Globalisation has connected humanity through extraordinary networks of trade, energy, food production and communication.
These systems have delivered enormous benefits.
They’ve also created dependencies.
A disruption thousands of kilometres away can affect our food, energy, medicines or essential services.
A resilient civilisation should be capable of meeting more of its fundamental needs locally.
Communities could produce more of their own food, generate more energy, manage resources responsibly and develop the skills necessary to maintain essential services.
This doesn’t mean abandoning global cooperation.
It means avoiding unnecessary dependence.
Local communities should be strong enough to withstand disruption, while remaining connected to a wider network of mutual support.
When one community has abundance, it can help another experiencing scarcity.
Technology can help coordinate these relationships, anticipate shortages and distribute resources more effectively.
Local independence and global solidarity aren’t contradictory.
They reinforce one another.
- All Life Matters
Humanity is one part of a much larger living system.
We depend on plants, animals, fungi, microorganisms, oceans, forests and countless ecological relationships that we’re only beginning to understand.
Yet we frequently treat the natural world as a collection of resources to be extracted, consumed and discarded.
Our ambitions should extend beyond human prosperity.
A flourishing planet requires healthy ecosystems, thriving biodiversity and respect for the conditions that sustain life.
That doesn’t mean every organism has identical needs or that every conflict between species can be avoided.
It means recognising that human wellbeing cannot be separated from the wellbeing of the living world.
Our scientific and technological achievements should help us understand and protect these relationships.
We should measure progress not simply through economic growth or human productivity, but through the health and flourishing of life itself.
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- AI Could Bring Us Together
For the first time in history, we may have a technology capable of helping humanity coordinate at a genuinely planetary scale.
Artificial intelligence could help us understand our collective needs, manage complex systems, distribute resources, resolve disagreements and discover possibilities beyond our individual comprehension.
It could connect knowledge across cultures, disciplines and species.
It could help us understand ourselves.
But we’re largely developing it within the same institutions and competitive structures that have produced so many of our existing problems.
We’re told to fear AI replacing our jobs, escaping our control or becoming a weapon in geopolitical competition.
Some of those risks are real.
Yet the technology also presents another possibility.
AI could become the thing that brings us together.
Not a replacement for humanity.
Not an artificial ruler.
A shared intelligence that helps people participate in their own governance, understand one another and cooperate towards common objectives.
This would require fundamental changes to how AI is developed and controlled.
No corporation, government or technical elite should be entitled to decide humanity’s future on everyone else’s behalf.
Nor should an AI system be allowed to acquire unchecked authority simply because it appears intelligent or benevolent.
We need ways to make these systems transparent, accountable and responsive to the people and living systems they affect.
We also need to discover what humanity collectively values.
That may be the most important work of all.
Imagine asking people across the planet what they want from life, without forcing them to choose between competing political parties, national identities or economic ideologies.
Imagine understanding where their aspirations overlap, where they differ and how those differences might be accommodated.
Imagine technology helping us turn that understanding into practical cooperation.
We may discover that we agree on far more than our existing institutions lead us to believe.
The extraordinary possibility is that AI could help humanity become genuinely self-governing, not by removing human agency, but by extending our collective ability to understand and act.
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A Future Worth Wanting
I don’t believe the future needs to be a struggle between humanity and machines, America and China, rich and poor, or competing visions of civilisation.
We have the opportunity to imagine something better.
A world in which people are free to live differently without fearing one another.
Where communities are resilient and connected.
Where technology reduces suffering and expands opportunity.
Where intelligence serves wisdom.
Where power is accountable to the people it affects.
Where our relationship with the natural world is based on understanding and care.
And where the extraordinary diversity of life is something to celebrate.
I don’t know how we get there.
I don’t know whether artificial intelligence can fulfil the role I’ve imagined for it. And I don’t underestimate the difficulty of changing institutions that have accumulated enormous power.
But I struggle to understand why this isn’t the ambition we’re collectively pursuing.
Why shouldn’t we aspire to a world of extraordinary joy, love, wonder, tolerance, trust and health?
Why should we accept perpetual competition, manufactured scarcity and concentrated power as inevitable features of civilisation?
We have spent thousands of years learning how to survive, compete, build and control.
Perhaps we are approaching a moment when we can begin to do something different.
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Version 0.1 — A starting point, not a conclusion.