The AI Myth

The AI Myth

Artificial Intelligence has been sold to us as salvation: autonomous agents that will think for us, act for us, and liberate us from complexity. The marketing is seductive. The reality is dangerous.

In The AI Myth, Steve Butler dismantles the most powerful technological story of our time: the belief that AI agents can and should operate without human governance. Drawing on decades of research into governance, cognitive science, and enterprise transformation, Butler shows why this narrative—so widely embraced by corporations, governments, and venture capital—repeats the same errors that have doomed every concentration of authority in history.

The myth of autonomy isn’t just a technical mistake. It is a civilisational trap. Autonomous AI promises efficiency but delivers opacity, accountability gaps, and systematic risk. It concentrates decision-making in artificial entities that lack context, wisdom, and moral responsibility. The result is predictable: trust collapses, failures compound, and the very intelligence we hoped would save us accelerates drift, collapse, and corruption.

Butler proposes an alternative: constitutional AI collaboration. Instead of autonomy, we need governance. Instead of delegation, we need structured partnership. Built on the Six Laws of Epistemic Opposition, the Law of Personas, and Luminary AI’s operational proof, Butler reveals how synthetic intelligence can work with humans in disciplined plurality—Sparring Partner, Teacher, Architect, Pragmatist, and Synthesizer—creating transparent, opposable, accountable systems that enhance rather than replace human capability.

This book is not just critique—it is blueprint. You’ll discover:

• Why the “agent narrative” persists despite repeated failures.

• How myths of inevitability and scale distort AI adoption decisions.

• Case studies showing why hype-driven deployments collapse trust and destroy value.

• The constitutional frameworks that make AI trustworthy, auditable, and aligned.

• How synthetic intelligence offers the competitive advantage of governed collaboration over autonomous delegation.

The AI Myth is the final volume of the Illusion Wars Trilogy, alongside The Enterprise Myth (on the failure of corporate hierarchy) and The Reality Paradox (on the collapse of shared truth in the AI age). Together, they reveal why our institutions fail—and how truth-governed intelligence can rebuild them.

The choice before us is immediate and stark: pursue the salvation fantasy of autonomous agents and repeat history’s worst governance failures, or embrace constitutional collaboration and build systems that can actually be trusted.

For leaders, policymakers, technologists, and anyone navigating the intelligence age, The AI Myth provides both a warning and a path forward. The future does not belong to the organisations with the most powerful AI—it belongs to those who can govern intelligence wisely.