Dwarkesh

In our scenario, they never quite get all the way, but they're gradually bringing them closer and closer to the government orbit.

Part of what they want is security because they know that if China steals some of this and they get these superhuman hackers.

And part of what they want is just knowledge and control over what's going on.

So through our scenario, that process is getting further and further along until by the time that the government wakes up to the possibility of superintelligence, they're already pretty cozy with the AI companies.

They already understand that superintelligence is kind of the key to power in the future.

And so they are starting to integrate some of the national security state with some of the leadership of the AI companies so that these AIs are...

programmed to follow the commands of important people rather than just doing things on their own.

We also are pretty uncertain how much opposition there's going to be from civil society and how much trouble that's going to cause for the companies.

So people who are worried about job loss, people who are worried about art, copyright, things like that, maybe enough of a block that AI becomes extremely politically unpopular.

I think we have...

Open Rain, our fictional companies, net approval ratings getting down to like minus 40, minus 50 sometime around this point.

So I think they're also worried that if the president isn't completely on their side, then they might get some laws targeting them or they may just need the president on their side to swat down other people who are trying to make laws targeting them.

And the way to get the president on their side is to really play up the national security implications.

Like, if our timeline was 2040, then I would have these broad heuristics about is government good, is private industry good, things like this.

But we know the people involved.

We know who's in the government.

We know who's leading all of these labs.

So...

To me, like, I mean, if it were decentralized, if it was broad-based civil society, that would be different.

To me, the differences between an autocratic centralized three-letter agency and an autocratic centralized corporation aren't that exciting.