The issue at play in the AI question, or the question of tempering our growth in general, isn’t just that our technology is built without higher values that can mitigate its excesses. It’s that culturally we lack a story as to why values even matter to begin with. It’s futile to appeal to ethics in this context, because the ethics aren’t embedded at a deep enough level to counter powerful incentive structures. They aren’t worth dying for, because the system doesn’t value them, it only values quantity.