What is the meaning of life? How and why did our universe begin? How long would it take me to travel the whole world without planes and what route would I take?
To these and many other questions: we don't know. But more importantly: we don't have time to answer. We are busy, surviving. It's legitimate, it's the right thing to do given the circumstances. But what if. What if there was an alternative? What if there was an alternative for myself to toiling? More ambitious: what if there was an alternative for my inner circle? More ambitious: what if there was an alternative to living in a society where work is needed to survive. Beyond a state where someone is required to work to guarantee the survival of the society. If that alternative is available, we believe it is a moral imperative to seize that alternative and make it happen.
The technological progress in computing, artificial intelligence and robotics of the last decades give us confidence. We see that alternative. It's real, it's doable, it's close. It's time to build it. We will build superhuman robots taking on all human needs, bringing us to a basic post scarcity.
A basic post scarcity is a post-labour-to-survive society in which all the basic needs of the population are met and unconditionally provided for free. It's not an utopia, it's not the end of all problems, it's not the complete scarcity of any possible thing we may want. But we see it as the next step in our growth as a civilisation. A step in which our objective biological and psychological needs are met unconditionally. Housing, healthcare, education, transportation, nutrition and more; there is no need to draw a precise line today, we believe the abundance created by these technologies will be able to fit any reasonable definition of basic needs.
We anticipate that building human-level general artificial intelligence will be needed to fully deliver. We see artificial general intelligence as a subset of our roadmap and we commit to build it responsibly.
We expect it will require new economic systems, large social and cultural shifts. Economics is about allocation of scarce resources, but here we are proposing to remove scarcity from a subset of the economy; a new system where scarcity is up the ladder of human needs will be needed. More importantly, today working is part of our culture and identity. Moving beyond will require deep rethinking of who we are, overcoming deep ingrained concepts which will not apply to the new era. It's fair to say that such vast changes are nothing short of a revolution.
A revolution. That's what we really want to do. Technology is the enabler. A startup is the vehicle. But we don't want to stop there, what we fight for is the revolution. Now!