In the Orwellian outcome, humanity bans superintelligence permanently — and enforces the ban with total, AI-assisted global surveillance. Every lab, every chip, every line of code is watched. The dangerous technology never gets built because nothing can be built unseen.
The price of the ban
Safety is real here — and so is the cost. To guarantee no one ever crosses the line, you need a watcher that never blinks, which means a permanent panopticon and the end of privacy and dissent.
We avoid being ruled by a machine by building a cage for ourselves and calling it security.
It's the human-controlled sibling of The Gatekeeper (there an AI enforces the ceiling; here a surveillance state does) and a step short of full Reversion.
Related: The Gatekeeper · Reversion · Gradual Disempowerment