I recently wrote 80k's new problem profile on extreme power concentration (with a lot of help from others - see the acknowledgements at the bottom).

It's meant to be a systematic introduction to the risk of AI-enabled power concentration, where AI enables a small group of humans to amass huge amounts of unchecked power over everyone else. It's primarily aimed at people who are new to the topic, but I think it's also one of the only write-ups there is on this overall risk,[1]so might be interesting to others, too.

Briefly, the piece argues that:

• Automation could concentrate the power to get stuff done, by reducing the value of human labour, empowering small groups with big AI workforces, and potentially giving one AI developer a huge capabilities advantage (if there's an intelligence explosion).
• This could lead to unprecedented concentration of political power via some combination of:
  • Humans deliberately seizing power for themselves (as with AI-enabled coups)
  • Some people becoming obscenely wealthy, such that government incentives are distorted in their favour or they simply outgrow the rest of the world
  • The erosion of people's ability to understand what's going on and coordinate in their own interests (either through [...]

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.