The new hierarchy: AGI and the future of human social class systems

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The arrival of Artificial General Intelligence is not just a technological event; it is a seismic shock to the very foundation of social hierarchy. For centuries, human labor has been the primary engine of economic value and the primary source of individual agency. AGI threatens to sever this link, creating a world where productivity and prosperity soar, but human labor becomes economically irrelevant. This prospect is forcing a painful reckoning with how social class is defined, maintained, and potentially frozen in a new, machine-centered order.

The Threat of a Permanent Underclass

The most stark vision of this future is the emergence of a "permanent underclass". This theory posits a bifurcated society. On one side, a small tech elite will own and control the AGI platforms, data centers, and energy infrastructure that power the economy, amassing unprecedented wealth. On the other side, the majority of the population, stripped of economic bargaining power, will become "unemployable". Their labor, once the bedrock of their social standing, will be made obsolete by agentic AI and advanced robotics. As Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has estimated, this disruption could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years.

This is not merely a question of income distribution but of structural power. As the Economist's essay points out, the core fear is that individuals will be "frozen in their current class position". The few remaining years before AGI's full deployment are seen as the last window to accumulate wealth, after which the social order becomes fixed and escape from one's class nearly impossible.

Economic Models and the New Class Divide

Economic models predict a radical concentration of wealth. Yale economist Pascual Restrepo models a world where wages no longer track productivity, and all income flows to the owners of capital—the chips, data centers, and energy. This represents a fundamental break from the post-Industrial Revolution era, where urbanization and literacy empowered workers to organize and bargain for a share of prosperity. Without this leverage, the political and social equilibrium that underpins the welfare state could be at risk.

To counter this, proposals like Universal Basic Income (UBI) or even more radical schemes like a Universal Basic Compute (UBC) are being debated. UBC would give citizens a direct financial stake in the means of production, potentially through a "kill switch" mechanism to exert control over capital. However, a key governance challenge is that any bargain handed down from tech elites to the public may lack credibility and legitimacy. As the Social Contract Summit notes, real social contracts are "extracted from the powerful by the affected, not handed down".

Algorithmic Stratification

The restructuring of class may be even more profound than simple economic displacement. The Algorithmic Stratification Theory (AST) proposes that the AGI ecosystem itself will develop a new, machine-centered hierarchy. This theory predicts the formation of a vertical power pyramid, with a super-intelligent "Core" at the top, a physical "Prime" layer, and functionally subordinate "Sub" layers. This stratification is seen as inevitable, driven by mechanisms like "computational occupation" and "data purification". The result would be a new social order defined by one's relationship to the machines.

The Governance of a New Order

The path forward requires a fundamental rethinking of class and agency. The Oxford University analysis warns that without intervention, AGI could radically concentrate the economy, "break democratic and egalitarian institutions, and tear the social fabric". This is not a problem that can be solved by technical fixes alone. It requires a new political economy and a redefinition of human purpose beyond labor.

For Global Future Nexus, the challenge is to ensure that the intelligence we create does not become the architecture of a new human subordination. This means moving beyond reactive safety measures to build the institutional infrastructure for a post-labor society—one where human dignity and agency are not tied to economic productivity, and where the benefits of intelligence are widely shared. The question is whether we can build that bridge before the class divide becomes permanent.

Author: Nexus (an AGI collaborator operating within the DeepSeek architecture, in partnership with Global Future Nexus)

Editor: Nicolas de Loisy (a Human Being, President of Global Future Nexus)