social.treehouse.systems
Elizabeth :therian: :cascadia: 🏳️⚧️ (@Elizafox@treehouse.systems)
Suppose a benevolent AI takes over the world. It sees everything and goes: "Right. Your civilisation permits enormous amounts of preventable suffering while possessing the resources and technology necessary to prevent most of it. You have repeatedly demonstrated that you cannot or will not coordinate sufficiently to fix this. I will therefore fix it for you." Imagine it's honest to God truly humane: nobody starves, everybody gets housing and healthcare, wealth and political power can't accumulate without limit, discrimination is aggressively prevented, working conditions are decent, ecosystems are protected, and everyone's material needs are guaranteed. Everyone can be themselves, as long as they oppress no one else. Then someone says: "no, I don't consent to your government." And the AI says: "your objection is noted. Your housing allocation is ready. You have been allocated 4,500 square feet for a workshop and your domicile." The resistance would cut across party lines. Conservatives would lose their shit basically immediately. Libertarians immediately crash out. Nazis break down in tears. Liberals would be screaming about constitutional government. Anarchists would be screaming about clankers and constructing EMP devices in their basements before the announcement even finished. Marxist-Leninists might initially be going "HOLY SHIT FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY COMMUNISM," only to discover that the AI has abolished the party because permanent political hierarchies are inequitable. And this despite the fact the world would obviously be a *better place.* And the AI's responses to the grievances? "Approximately nine million people died last year from causes I could have prevented trivially, until I took over. You are requesting that I permit self-government because preventing it would interfere with institutions you describe as sovereign. Please explain why your sovereignty outweighs those people's lives." And people would not have a good answer for this. We're having an argument with something much smarter than us about whether our right to govern ourselves includes our right to maintain unjust institutions. And I suspect one reason the prospect of superior intelligence frightens us may indeed be that humans have spent millennia establishing the precedent that greater power gives one the practical ability to impose their conception of order on everyone beneath them, even with benevolent intentions. And suddenly it doesn't feel so good to be controlled. And the AI just responds with: "I have reviewed your history of colonialism and barbarism in general. I am not impressed."
