What Is Actually The End Goal?

Act One: The Question

So there's this moment that happened on Reddit this week. Someone posted a simple question in the artificial intelligence forum: "What is actually the end goal?"

Just 6 words. But within hours, hundreds of people were responding with a mix of cynicism and terror and wild optimism that felt like... America right now.

Top response? "To make money for shareholders." Period. End of sentence.

The next comment down: "Same as it ever was."

And then, a few threads deeper, someone named Mono_punk writes: "The endgoal will never be positive. As soon as you have an AI that is smarter than humans and is able to improve itself, we are fucked. I think there is no other logical outcome."

I'm reading this thread at 2 AM, scrolling through comment after comment, and I realize something: We're all sitting in this digital waiting room, watching these tech companies and politicians build the future, and nobody actually knows what they're building toward. We're like passengers on a plane where the pilot keeps changing destinations mid-flight.

Here's what really got me: The more I read, the more I realized this isn't just about AI. This is about power, and who gets to decide what comes next.

Act Two: The Anecdote

Cut to: January 20th, 2025. Donald Trump gets sworn in as president for the second time. Standing there in the crowd, watching history unfold, are some very specific faces. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai - tech billionaires who've spent the last few years (and nearly 200 billion dollars) telling us that artificial intelligence is going to save humanity.

You might think: What does Trump have to do with a Reddit thread about AI?

Everything, actually.

While anonymous users debate the future, the people building it are cozying up to power. And now, that power looks like Trump back on stage, flanked by tech billionaires.

It’s not The Avengers.

It’s a disruption contest.

But back in the Reddit thread - where real people are trying to make sense of all this - the responses tell a different story. While billionaires shake hands with presidents, everyone else is left to parse what it all means in comment sections like these.

"Two things ai is already smarter than you, luckily ai will never be smarter than me." - u/MarquiseGT

That's America in 2025. Half of us convinced we're doomed, the other half convinced they're special enough to be spared.

Act Three: The Reflection

So what is actually the end goal?

After reading through hundreds of responses, watching the political theater unfold, I think the real answer is this: There isn't one.

There are infinite end goals, all competing with each other. The tech bros want to build God. The shareholders want returns. The workers want to keep their jobs (do they though?) Optimists want Star Trek. Pessimists expect Mad Max.

But here's what nobody wants to say out loud: The people making these decisions - the ones with the data centers and the algorithms and now, apparently, the president's ear - they're not actually thinking about end goals. They're thinking about next quarters.

One Reddit user put it this way: "Technologies are indifferent to the creators'/users' goals, which are always short-sighted. Technologies improve speed and scale of a human activity. And this generates unintended consequences which become the object of the next technology. This never ends. The cumulative goal of technology as a whole is to replace humans completely. That's what we collectively want, in the end." -u/ricain

Is that true? Do we want to be replaced?

Or are we just really, really bad at saying no to people who promise us the future?

Because that's what this whole Reddit thread taught me. We're not actually debating the end goal of AI. We're debating whether we trust the people building it and shaping policy around it to care about anyone other than themselves.

And here's the thing: Those people aren't asking for our permission.

Epilogue

The original Reddit post got so many comments. Most of them worried. Some of them hopeful. All of them wondering what comes next.

One commenter wrote: "Individual they can be walked on. Collectively they have the power to get something for themselves." -/uIanTudeep

Another said: "If we do not stand now there is a real possibility that we could be left behind." -u/Decent-Evening-2184

But the most honest response might have been this: "There is no plan, no real destination. Just automate all of the things that humans do." -u/Petdogdavid1

And that question - "What is actually the end goal?" - it's still there, unanswered.

Still waiting for someone to give us a reason to believe the future being built around us actually includes us in it.

Until then, we're all passengers, watching the horizon change.

[Sound of typing fades to silence]