Was zu tun mit einer Welt, die von Status besessen ist

*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)