PMCs are a bad example. My primary concern is not Elon Musk engineering a takeover so much as a clique of military leaders, or perhaps just democracies’ heads of state, taking power using a government-controlled army that has already been automated, probably by a previous administration that wasn’t thinking too hard about safeguards. That’s why I bring up the example of Burma.
An unlikely but representative story of how this happens might be: branches of the U.S. military get automated over the next 10 years probably as AGI contributes to robotics research, “other countries are doing it and we need to stay competitive”, etc. Generals demand and are given broad control over large amounts of forces. A ‘Trump’ (maybe a democrat Trump, who knows) is elected, and makes highly political Natsec appointments. ‘Trump’ isn’t re-elected. He comes up with some argument about how there was widespread voter fraud in Maine and they need a new election, and his faction makes a split decision to launch a coup on that basis. There’s a civil war, and the ’Trump’ists win because much of the command structure of the military has been automated at this point, rebels can’t fight drones, and they really only need a few loyalists to occupy important territory.
I don’t think this is likely to happen to any one country, but when you remove the safeguard of popular revolt and the ability of low level personnel to object, and remove the ability of police agencies to build a case quickly enough, it starts to become concerning that this might happen over the next ~15 years in one or two countries.
PMCs are a bad example. My primary concern is not Elon Musk engineering a takeover so much as a clique of military leaders, or perhaps just democracies’ heads of state, taking power using a government-controlled army that has already been automated, probably by a previous administration that wasn’t thinking too hard about safeguards. That’s why I bring up the example of Burma.
An unlikely but representative story of how this happens might be: branches of the U.S. military get automated over the next 10 years probably as AGI contributes to robotics research, “other countries are doing it and we need to stay competitive”, etc. Generals demand and are given broad control over large amounts of forces. A ‘Trump’ (maybe a democrat Trump, who knows) is elected, and makes highly political Natsec appointments. ‘Trump’ isn’t re-elected. He comes up with some argument about how there was widespread voter fraud in Maine and they need a new election, and his faction makes a split decision to launch a coup on that basis. There’s a civil war, and the ’Trump’ists win because much of the command structure of the military has been automated at this point, rebels can’t fight drones, and they really only need a few loyalists to occupy important territory.
I don’t think this is likely to happen to any one country, but when you remove the safeguard of popular revolt and the ability of low level personnel to object, and remove the ability of police agencies to build a case quickly enough, it starts to become concerning that this might happen over the next ~15 years in one or two countries.