David Duvenaud

And every politician is going to have something to say about this and say, I'm the pro-human, no AI is ever going to take your job politician.

But they're just not going to have viable policy levers to actually slow automation.

And just in general...

people don't get votes on things where the government is really constrained or they think it's important enough like no one ever had a referendum on should we build nuclear weapons for instance and i think it's also going to be the case that government's hands will just be tied where they'll all say oh yeah i'm going to have humans in the loop or human oversight or whatever more direct human representation but it's just going to be so ineffective that when like the rubber hits the road

those policies are just not going to be implemented.

And it's going to frustrate voters every time.

And they're going to say like, no, the next guy, we want to vote for the one who's really going to represent like human in the loop interest or whatever it is that seems most scary, but they just won't be able to like vote for their policy preferences.

Yeah.

Really, whether the government is made of humans or not,

There is like a slight sort of like oversight, I think, feedback mechanism and, you know, being connected to the people that helps align the government.

But really, the fundamental thing that is making governments treat us well is that they need us, right?

Like even the North Korean government has to feed its farmers and its soldiers or whatever, right?

And so if humans were still indispensable in some important roles, I wouldn't be very scared of a machine government.

And conversely, if I was dispensable in all aspects, I would be much more scared of a human-run government.

And we think of the very worst governments in history, like the USSR, or I think Cambodia maybe takes the record for killing the largest fraction of their population.

But in general...

no matter what political party ends up in power, they don't, even in the very worst case, end up killing more than some small fraction of their population.

Life can only get so bad when you're needed.

That's the real key thing that has been keeping governments aligned, and that's the key thing that's going to change.

Yeah, I mean, maybe the closest contemporary analog is Saudi Arabia, where the government basically gets most of its wealth from oil.