The Compulsory Imaginary: AGI and Corporate Authority

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how leading AGI firms, despite differences, use similar rhetorical strategies to construct sociotechnical imaginaries that reinforce their authority over technological futures, extending the framework to private corporations.

Contribution

It extends the sociotechnical imaginaries framework from nation-states to private firms, revealing the structural rhetorical mechanisms that project corporate authority over AGI futures.

Findings

Both firms use four shared rhetorical strategies to shape imaginaries.

The imaginary reflects institutional positioning rather than individual firm differences.

The mechanism of authority projection is at least structurally embedded, not idiosyncratic.

Abstract

This paper argues that the two leading AGI firms -- OpenAI and Anthropic -- construct sociotechnical imaginaries through a structurally consistent rhetorical strategy, despite meaningful differences in execution. Drawing on Jasanoff (2015)'s framework of sociotechnical imaginaries, the paper analyzes two essays published in late 2024: Sam Altman's "The Intelligence Age" and Dario Amodei's "Machines of Loving Grace." Close comparative reading identifies four shared rhetorical operations: the self-exemption move, which disavows prophetic authority while exercising it; teleological naturalization, which embeds AGI's arrival in narratives of historical inevitability; qualified acknowledgment, which absorbs concessions to risk into an optimistic frame; and implicit indispensability, which positions each firm as central to the imagined future without naming it as a commercial actor. That two competing institutions with different cultures, risk philosophies, and leaders with notably different public personae converge on the same rhetorical architecture suggests the imaginary reflects not only firm-level strategy but the institutional position these firms occupy. The paper extends the sociotechnical imaginaries framework from nation-states to private firms at the frontier of transformative technology development, identifies the discursive mechanism through which corporate authority over technological futures is projected and stabilized, and demonstrates that this mechanism is at minimum structural rather than idiosyncratic. The findings raise the question of what institutional arrangements would make that authority contestable from outside the firms that produce it.