In an episode of the Joe Rogan Experience featuring human rights researcher Siddharth Kara, the conversation took an unexpected turn toward artificial intelligence and its potential role in ending human conflict.
While discussing the horrors of cobalt mining in the Congo and historical slavery, Rogan began questioning whether humans are fundamentally capable of fairly distributing resources and preventing conflict. His answer was a radical one: perhaps a sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence could do what governments and human leaders have repeatedly failed to accomplish.
Rogan acknowledged that AI eliminating humanity is one of the technology’s most frequently discussed dangers. But he wondered whether the same technology could instead eliminate one of humanity’s oldest problems: war.
“You know the real fear about AI is that AI is going to eliminate people. Famously a lot of these CEOs or people working on tech have said there’s a 10% chance that AI decides to eliminate the human race. But isn’t there maybe also a possibility if it’s done correctly that it stops war completely. Comletely controls resources, completely controls all military weaponry, all systems. Everything.”
Rather than viewing AI solely as a potential threat, Rogan imagined it becoming a system capable of controlling military weaponry, managing natural resources and preventing governments from using force against one another.
The idea developed into something resembling a “digital god,” an intelligence that could oversee the systems humans currently fight over without being driven by the same motivations.
“Instead of it all being sort of decided upon by the people that are controlling the resources, the human beings that benefit from, you know, influencing politicians to make certain deals and making sure that there’s certain conflicts so they can sell weapons. And instead of all that, the AI controls it. The digital god, the digital daddy, right?”
Rogan’s vision extended beyond military affairs. He suggested that an AI could manage resources such as oil, minerals and water while ensuring people have access to basic necessities like food, shelter and education. Individuals could still accumulate wealth through businesses, he suggested, but the planet’s fundamental resources would be treated as something belonging to everyone.
The underlying argument was that removing scarcity and desperation could also remove some of the incentives that lead to conflict.
That same logic led Rogan to question whether traditional government itself could eventually become obsolete.
He criticized the current political system as essentially a competition for popularity, in which voters choose leaders who subsequently fail to deliver on many of their promises.
“Or maybe it eliminates government in this the way that we’re dealing with it now where it’s humans have a popularity contest to see who controls the entire government.”
Rogan continued by arguing that elected officials frequently fail to follow through on what they promised voters.
However, he did not present an immediate transition to AI rule as a simple solution. Instead, he suggested that any integration would need to happen gradually and with strict ethical safeguards.
“Maybe there’s a slow integration of this technology as long as it can be controlled in a sense of it has a clear ethical and moral framework,” he noted.
For all of Rogan’s optimism about what AI could accomplish, he also recognized the danger of the technology developing without adequate safeguards.
He compared the current race to develop increasingly powerful AI systems to the Manhattan Project, arguing that competition between countries and companies could encourage developers to prioritize capability over safety.
Rogan stated, “The really scary thing is that we’re in essentially like a Manhattan project sort of a race… one of the things about AI when they run war games, simulated war games, they almost always choose nukes.”
This wasn’t the first time Rogan had floated the idea of AI taking over some of the functions traditionally handled by governments. During an earlier conversation with physicist Carlo Rovelli, Rogan described the possibility as his “crazy hope,” suggesting that humans could eventually “farm off” responsibilities such as managing foreign relations to artificial intelligence.
Rogan acknowledged that the idea sounds frightening, but argued that the potential consequences of human decision-making could be even more concerning. “I know that’s terrifying to people, but just think of the disastrous effects that we’ve had so far with humans doing it,” he said.
He then imagined what could happen if AI were placed in control of military conflicts and weapons: “If all international military conflicts ended instantaneously upon AI governing the use of conflicts and military weapons, imagine that.”
