ForeCast

Checks, Balances, and Power Concentration (with Rose Hadshar and Nora Ammann)

ForeCast

Show Notes

Rose Hadshar (Forethought) and Nora Ammann (ARIA) talk about power concentration, checks and balances, coups, and post-AGI political economy.

You can read a full transcript here.

This is the audio version of a video podcast. Watch the video on YouTube: youtu.be/PB855Xpx1kk?si=v05LVM-2VQ3XiT7N

Prompted in part by Rose's recent article for 80,000 Hours on ‘Extreme power concentration’ — 80000hours.org/problem-profiles/extreme-power-concentration

Timstamps:

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:26 What is ‘power concentration’? Is power concentration the right framing?

00:05:25 When can it be good for power to be centralised?

00:09:40 Is ‘checks and balances’ a better framing?

00:11:16 How AI undermines existing checks and balances

00:15:25 Economic power, meme complexes, and cultural influence

00:28:50 AI companies vs governments as centres of power

00:31:25 The difficulty of knowing where power actually lies

00:40:05 Do humans and AIs concentrate power differently?

00:48:38 Should we be trying to imagine a better post-AGI political economy?

00:56:28 Concrete actions: transparency & whistleblower protections

00:59:07 Human-AI teaming and collaborative intelligence

01:01:16 AI agent economies and proving trustworthiness

01:13:16 Can we train AI to follow the law?

01:16:33 Building resilient coalitions of trustworthy agents

01:18:42 Closing reflections

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