I walk on the street and there’s cigarette butts everywhere. I stare up at the cathedral ceiling and one of the chandeliers is obscene flickering. I open my laptop and the trackpad breaks, the city internet sputters, twitter refuses to let me sign in, search doesn’t work, and even Google docs doesn’t load.

I close the laptop and at least there’s sun, but even that is occasionally muffled by a cloud. Thank God my phone works fine (or you wouldn’t be reading this).

Can humans effectively steward Earth, if this is what we’re working with?

Maybe? When faced with the list above, there are those in my circle who say “we should build the Good Steward as fast as we can: rule by monkeys shouldn’t be tolerated any longer”.

Waymos are much safer than homo sapiens at the wheel, so why not build a “Waymo for everything”? Car accidents and broken websites are relatively minor problems, compared with what a Waymo for everything could tackle (1, 2, 3).

What are we waiting for??

Putting aside the fact that building the Good Steward too fast may backfire, there’s something mildly cowardly about getting something else to do human homework.