▲demonstrandom38 minutes ago
[-] The AI-risk conversation tends to split between " end of the world" and "overrated". I wanted to take seriously a more "mundane" failure mode, which is that that AI could shift the long-running balance between states and their populations toward durable authoritarianism.
reply▲Yes. Authoritarianism has largely been held at bay by ensuring power was distributed betwixt as many people as possible, ensuring the excesses and quirks, and abuses of one could be constrained by someone else in the effector chain with an opposing weighting. AI potentially upends that state of affairs. As one is enabled to surround themselves with sycophantic yes devices, the probability of reaching a critical mass where a single small group seizes power slowly edges closer to 1.
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