What to Do About a World Obsessed With Status

*Toby Stuart’s Anointed argues that while status-seeking is human nature, the internet has supercharged its influence.*

*Gary Sernovitz for Bloomberg News*

*Deus ex machina* — “god from the machine,” in Latin — is a trendy phrase, inspiring movie names, clothing brands and dark thoughts about our tech-driven world at the dawn of AI. But the phrase is about a contrivance in classical theater: When a play was nearing its end and a plot was unsolvable, the playwright would have an actor playing Athena, Helios or some other god appear by crane (the machine) to rescue a character or (why not) reverse death.

Our current moment seems to be about erecting cranes for our own knotty problems: Will economic productivity reaccelerate? Can civil politics return? Can we guarantee basic income for all? Is my job safe? Maybe AI is the fix for everything! We don’t know. It’s still new! But speculating on AI can at least be a way to end the show.

One case study for this AI-to-the-rescue phenomenon is *Anointed: The Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner-Take-Most World* by Toby Stuart, a business professor at UC Berkeley. For most of its length, Anointed is peppy, informative and balanced. But AI, out of nowhere, grabs its last 10 pages — just as Stuart’s moral exploration of status was becoming knottier. That knotting came from the two strands of his book: a lively, practical guide for how to think about and use a better understanding of status, and a critique of how status structures reinforce inequality and sully our souls.

[Read the full review here.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-05/how-ai-will-change-the-way-we-assign-status)

Thanks for sharing FuturologyBot.  A few paragraphs stood out to me:

*”And then deus ex machina: “AI systems, if thoughtfully designed, could truly revolutionize how we allocate opportunities. Unlike human decision-makers, algorithms can be rigorously tested for bias, continuously monitored for fairness, and revamped if and when problems are discovered.” Maybe AI won’t eliminate “the gloss of pedigree,” Stuart writes, but it will “scuff it up a bit.” He cheers on a near future in which your AI assistant, “unencumbered by brand loyalty, marketing influence, or cognitive limitations,” will help you optimize your shoe purchases. An assistant could also “analyze the nutritional composition of breakfast cereals” to tailor a recommendation to your needs”*

I think AI will be just as biased as the status quo since it is regurgitating the lowest common denominator of what is out there. The only way to get to something objective is to ask specific questions and compare the sources of information. 

*”Status may be inherent to life, but Stuart argues that it’s more central now, in what he fussily calls our “winner-takes-most” world. This is because those with status now claim not just an advantage, but an increasingly cumulative advantage. He references the “Matthew Effect,” so named for a line in the Gospels: “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.” (There’s a depressing second clause: “but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”) The accelerants of today’s Matthew Effect are “global, digitized marketplaces.””*

This rings so true: between influencers monetizing their “status”, to global marketplaces like Upwork offshoring jobs, to AI taking from creators and enriching those at the top. Those folks without the support of a cadre lawyers and MBA’s to extract value from their labor will be taken advantage of.