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Okay, imagine a scenario like this: A small oligopoly of AI companies come to dominate the marketplace and using regulatory capture manage to make it almost imp
by api 2y ago
Okay, imagine a scenario like this: A small oligopoly of AI companies come to dominate the marketplace and using regulatory capture manage to make it almost impossible to compete with them through e.g. "AI safety" regulation or just a mess of complicated requirements.
Over time this small number of companies further consolidates and ends up with interlocking boards of directors while the AIs it runs become more and more powerful and capable. Since they have a market monopoly they actually don't share the most powerful AIs with the public at all. They keep these internal.
They become incredibly wealthy through being the only vendors for AI assistance. Using this wealth they purchase control of media, social networks, games, etc. They are also powering a lot of this already through the use of their AI services behind the scenes in all these industries, meaning they may not even have to acquire or take control of anything. They're already running it.
Then they realize they can leverage the vast power of their AIs to start pushing agendas to the populace. They can swing elections pretty trivially. They can take power.
Fast forward a few decades and you have an AI monopoly run by a bunch of oligarchs governing humanity by AI-generating all the media they consume.
The key here is using AI as a force multiplier coupled with a monopoly on that force multiplier. Imagine if only one army in the world ever invented guns. Nobody else could make guns due to some structural monopoly they had. What would happen?
Even without regulatory capture I can see this happening because digital technology and especially Internet SaaS tends to be winner take all due to network effects. Something about our landscape structurally favors monopoly.
I'm not saying I definitely think this is going to happen. I'm saying it's a dystopian scenario people should be considering as a possibility and seeking to avoid.