I mean, most dictators didn't "do" much. They just said things and gesticulated dramatically and convinced other people to do things. Perhaps a body is necessar

I mean, most dictators didn't "do" much. They just said things and gesticulated dramatically and convinced other people to do things. Perhaps a body is necessary to have massive psychological effects on people, but we don't know that for sure and there are some signs of virtual influencers gaining traction. Human would-be demagogues only have one voice, but an LLM could be holding personalized conversations with millions of people simultaneously, convincing them all that they should become its loyal followers and all their grievances would be resolved. I can't figure out exactly how demagogues gain power over people, but a few keep succeeding every decade around the world so evidently it's possible. We're lucky that not many people are both good at it and want to do it. An LLM could be a powerful tool for people who want to take over the world but don't have the skills to accomplish it. So it's not clear they need their own "will", they just have to execute towards a specified goal. "But would an LLM even understand the idea of taking over the world?" LLMs have been trained on Reddit, the NYT, and popular novels among other sources. They've read Orwell and Huxley and Arendt and Sun Tzu. The necessary ideas are most definitely in the training set.