GoKawiilDisclaimer: I'm just a random person on the internet and this article is my personal opinion. This article was written without AI.
The first time I heard from Rutger Bregman was due to his remarks at Davos about taxing the billionaires. His speech went viral and I was rooting for him. Later on he got to troll Tucker Carlson about Carlson being a millionaire working for billionaires. Absolutely fantastic.
A few books in, Bregman started the School for Moral ambition in 2024. Although he is a co-founder, he seems to be face of this non-profit organisation, doing a lot of high-visibility interviews and he's the author of the book "Moral Ambition".
The idea behind the School for Moral Ambition (SMA) is quite simple: use your talent to address the world's biggest problems. To paraphrase: "don't become a consultant at McKinsey but do something more valuable and worthwhile with your talent". The argument is similar to what Steve Jobs said to John Sculley: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or come with me and change the world?"
It sounds all very noble, but I've become a skeptic for multiple reasons.
Bregman rubbed me the wrong way in the last podcast episode of the "De Rudi & Freddie Show" in 2024. He confronted co-host and award-winning investigative journalist Jesse Frederik and openly questioned if his work really made a difference. Bregman implicated that Frederik could do other things that would be much more effective and be more impactful than his investigative journalism (I'm paraphrasing here).
I'm absolutely comfortable with questions like these, although it can feel confrontational. Yet I really felt it came from a somewhat righteous and smug moral superiority. I felt this way because I haven't seen any evidence that SMA has done anything of substance that warrants all the money involved.
Bregman drank the AI cool-aid
Now I already learned that Bregman was really enamoured with AI, and I'm absolutely not, for the usual reasons. That said, fast forwarding to today, I truly believe he has lost the plot, and this recent video (June 2026) is evidence of it.
He is comparing skepticism of artificial intelligence with climate change denial or climate skepticism. He sees AI as a tool that is beneficiary, just not in the hands of billionaires but in the hands of governments (as I understand it). He believes that AI will create an utopia where people can actually work less hours as Keynes 'wrongfully' predicted
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