I think there is an easier way to get the point across by focusing not on self-improving AI, which is hard to understand, but on something everyone already understands: AI will make it easier for rich people to exploit everyone else. Right now, dictators still have to spend effort on keeping their subordinates happy or else they will be overthrown. And those subordinates have to spend effort on keeping their own subordinates from rebelling, too. That way you get at least a small incentive to keep other people happy.
Once a dictator has an AI servant, all of that falls away. Everything becomes automated, and there is no longer any check on the dictator’s ruthlessness and evil at all.
Realistically, the self-improving AI will depose the dictator and then do who knows what. But do we actually need to convince people of that, given that it’s a hard sell? If people become convinced “Uncontrolled AI research leads to dictatorship”, won’t that have all the policy effects we need?
I think there is an easier way to get the point across by focusing not on self-improving AI, which is hard to understand, but on something everyone already understands: AI will make it easier for rich people to exploit everyone else. Right now, dictators still have to spend effort on keeping their subordinates happy or else they will be overthrown. And those subordinates have to spend effort on keeping their own subordinates from rebelling, too. That way you get at least a small incentive to keep other people happy.
Once a dictator has an AI servant, all of that falls away. Everything becomes automated, and there is no longer any check on the dictator’s ruthlessness and evil at all.
Realistically, the self-improving AI will depose the dictator and then do who knows what. But do we actually need to convince people of that, given that it’s a hard sell? If people become convinced “Uncontrolled AI research leads to dictatorship”, won’t that have all the policy effects we need?