cw:genocide
I suspect having semi-capable AI really DOES remove an important classical disincentive against using power to kill off huge swathes of the population. I’ve been thinking-not-thinking it for a while. For most of history, it’s been highly valuable for more people to be making things, coming up with ideas, and providing services which you don’t have to directly manage into doing so. Mass killing destroyed valuable resources in a way that takes time to recover from. But if it’s easy to Roll Your Own independent-ish agents–not removing people from where they already engaged elsewhere in the economy, but new ones… it suddenly becomes way more viable to try a genocide here and there. How do I tell if people mobilizing state power to do this is a non-negligible possibility and what could I do about it?