  The implications of technological innovation for sustainability are becoming
increasingly complex with information technology moving machines from being
mere tools for production or objects of consumption to playing a role in
economic decision making. This emerging role will acquire overwhelming
importance if, as a growing body of literature suggests, artificial
intelligence is underway to outperform human intelligence in most of its
dimensions, thus becoming "superintelligence". Hitherto, the risks posed by
this technology have been framed as a technical rather than a political
challenge. With the help of a thought experiment, this paper explores the
environmental and social implications of superintelligence emerging in an
economy shaped by neoliberal policies. It is argued that such policies
exacerbate the risk of extremely adverse impacts. The experiment also serves to
highlight some serious flaws in the pursuit of economic efficiency and growth
per se, and suggests that the challenge of superintelligence cannot be
separated from the other major environmental and social challenges, demanding a
fundamental transformation along the lines of degrowth. Crucially, with
machines outperforming them in their functions, there is little reason to
expect economic elites to be exempt from the threats that superintelligence
would pose in a neoliberal context, which opens a door to overcoming vested
interests that stand in the way of social change toward sustainability and
equity.
