Hacker News Reader

Comment by fnimick | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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%.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com