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Comment by marginalia_nu | Hacker News Reader

We've changed collective human behavior before though, outlawed slavery etc.

And yet, even in countries where slavery is outlawed, it's still done - sometimes out in the open, sometimes behind closed doors.

e.g. the US, where people in jail are exempt from all our progressive slave labor laws.

Be that as it may, the collective behavior and shape of society has undeniably changed.

Has it?

Because when I look at humanity over the ages, I see a select few using technology and violence to exert power and influence over the great many to further their own desires.

I don't see that changing in the future anytime soon, especially before AI gets to be the next technology in a long line of technology used to oppress and inflict violence on others.

Aren't you excited to take the human element out of the loop of enforcing property ownership rights?

In China, in Tianenmen, they had to bring in forces from the countryside because the city police wouldn't fire on their neighbors. AI won't have any restrictions or morals. An AI-powered law enforcement force would gun down every single person in a city if authorities called for it.

This is the future - maybe not everywhere, and probably not soon, but it is an eventuality. Also, AI will be treated like encryption - it will become a munition, with the same type of restrictions as munitions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...). Governments will keep the best AI for themselves, leaving the goof-nuts ChatGPT type stuff for private citizens.

Then the question becomes did those gun downed humans deserve what they got? And did that massacre result in a greater good? Those are the not-so-pleasant questions the humans will have to ask themselves (probably using AI to help, ironically).

The real question in my mind is, does democracy survive once the top 1% has a complete and unquestioned monopoly on violence and power? I don't think so.

It doesn't survive, but that's the moment when the monopoly on violence broken, and the government becomes open season for citizens. Yes, the deck is stacked against the citizens, but all else equal, I think the 1% prefers it when the masses aren't constructing gallows and sharpening pitchforks. The mob is our truest and strongest weapon against the 1%.

This is a good point. The civil war like the drug war though are choices made after an inevitable plunge onto the predictable path. Both choices had a high cost and were incredibly hard to make.

It was also predictably a delayed response with varying levels of limited effectiveness.

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