All Watched Over — Brautigan's poem & AI benevolence
Steven Levy's “Hackers“ traces how Brautigan's 1967 poem “All watched over by machines of loving grace“ inspired 1970s California Hardware Hackers and projects like Community Memory.
In 2026, that phrase evokes a different vision: humanity cradled by a powerful, aligned AI that acts as a benevolent dictator, allocating resources based on what it deems valuable.
Dario Amodei explores this in his essay “machines of loving grace” — sketching one possible future where AI systems, aligned to human values, distribute resources through a secondary economy they design.