The extraordinarily problematic A.I. executive Sam Altman writes on his blog: “My personal takeaway from the last several years, and take on why there has been so much Shakespearean drama between the companies in our field, comes down to this: ‘Once you see AGI you can’t unsee it.’ It has a real ‘ring of power’ dynamic to it, and makes people do crazy things. I don’t mean that AGI is the ring itself, but instead the totalizing philosophy of ‘being the one to control AGI.” Altman may think he’s referring to Tolkien, but, as I note in Wagnerism, the concept of a world-conquering, soul-destroying ring was invented by Wagner and then appropriated by Tolkien. The twilight of the tech-billionaire gods can’t come a moment too soon; let’s only hope that they don’t take the rest of us with them.