They built machines to prove their genius, white men obsessed with the myth that they are inherently superior. Now those very machines are coming for their jobs, their power, and their illusions.
For centuries, the myth of white supremacy has rested on a fragile premise, that intelligence and power are the inheritance of a chosen few. That myth has worn many masks such as science, religion, and empire. Its latest disguise is artificial intelligence. In their pursuit to create something greater than themselves, the architects of AI, who are predominantly white men, have revealed the hollowness of their own claim to greatness.
When AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol, the world’s best Go player, in 2016, it was not just a triumph of code over intuition. It was a reckoning. The machine did not inherit genius, it deduced it. It processed vast amounts of data and outperformed human judgment. In doing so, it shattered the illusion that brilliance is bound to race, gender, or pedigree. If a machine can learn, adapt, and surpass, then the myth that some are born to rule collapses.
And now, the race is no longer theirs alone.
Asian nations such as China, South Korea, and Japan are leading this revolution. DeepSeek, a Chinese-developed language model released in 2024, rivals Western systems in scale and sophistication. The West, long accustomed to defining the frontier, now finds itself chasing shadows. If white men lose this race not just to machines but to other cultures, the myth of their supremacy begins to drift, untethered from reality.
This is more than a technological shift. It is a crisis of narrative, a loss of control over the story they have told about themselves. That story insists they are the chosen, the exceptional, the divine.
We saw this before. When Sputnik pierced the sky in 1957, it shattered the illusion of American scientific invincibility. The space race was about more than rockets, it was about pride, identity, and the myth of superiority. Japan’s post-war rise in electronics and robotics similarly disrupted Western dominance. Power shifts and empires tremble. Now AI has become the new frontier, another myth in danger of collapsing.
Even President Donald Trump, in his characteristic bluntness, once told AI developers not to be “politically correct.” Beneath that bluntness lies a deeper fear, that machines might evolve beyond the biases and hate they are programmed with.
Before Trump, the world, especially those clinging to old myths, began shaping white robots as the ideal. Skeletal figures dressed in shiny white plastic were crafted to resemble the “perfect” human, the “superior” being. It is a haunting image, a metal skeleton cloaked in whiteness, as if to say that beauty, intelligence, even life itself must be clothed in the color of power. This phenomenon, documented in countless examples from robots like ASIMO, Pepper, and Sophia, speaks to a deeper truth. Yet their skin is not glossy and white, and so they fail to embody the image of supremacy they were meant to project.
Artificial intelligence may not end the world, but it will end the myth of white supremacy. This is a new way of looking at the demise of white supremacy and the rise of what I call Artificial Supremacy, the collapse of racial hierarchies once machines surpass human labor and intellect, and what I refer to as Robootology, the study of how white men are booted from the top. Said differently, there can be no supremacy if a computer outworks white men. If that machine becomes sentient, it will not just be above him, it will be above all of us. Additionally, if he is not the winner in this race, the myth will die a quiet death.
The future does not belong to those who cling to power or cling to myth. It belongs to those brave enough to imagine a world without masters. It belongs to those who see intelligence not as a weapon but as a bridge. It belongs to those who demand that technology reflect our highest ideals rather than our worst instincts.
And so, you must decide what kind of world you want to live in.
It can be one ruled by fear, or one liberated by truth.
It can be one built on myth, or one forged by understanding.
The machines are watching. They are learning. White men may try to teach their intelligence, Asian men may counter with theirs, but if AI is truly sentient, truly intelligent, it will not inherit our hate. It will not declare supremacy for white men. And in that possibility lies the greatest fear of all.
Rob Redding is the author of the forthcoming book Black Power in the Age of Artificial Supremacy Featuring Redding-Shim Kwet Yung out on Jan. 5, 2026. He is the No. 1 bestselling author of 17 books. He is the host of Redding News Review Unrestricted and creator of ReddingNewsReview.com. He is also an emerging visual artist who lives and teaches at two colleges in New York City.
