Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrbungie | Hacker News Reader

It sounds nice for them, until you remember what (arguably and in part educated/enlightened) people do when they're hungry and miserable. If this scenario ends up happening, I also expect guillotines waiting for the "kings" down the line.

View on HN

If we get that far, I see it happening more like...

"Don't worry Majesty, all of our models show that the peasants will not resort to actual violence until we fully wind down the bread and circuses program some time next year. By then we'll have easily enough suicide drones ready. Even better, if we add a couple million more to our order, just to be safe, we'll get them for only $4.75 per unit, with free rush shipping in case of surprise violence!"

> It sounds nice for them, until you remember what (arguably and in part educated/enlightened) people do when they're hungry and miserable. If

That's probably why the post you are responding to said "get rid of..." not "keep ...hungry and miserable".

People that don't exist don't revolt.

That will still need a civil war.

A regular war will do. Just point the finger at the neighbor and tell your subjects that he is responsible for gays/crops failing/drought/plague/low fps in crysis/failing birth rates/no jobs/fuel cost/you name it. See Russian invasions in all neighboring countries, the middle east, soon Taiwan etc.

Basically, they just need to mash the tribalism button until enough people are dead to suit them.

Those things happened under different historical contexts. In those times the means to control the serfs thoughts didn't exist.

Are you sure about that? In those times even thousands year old knowledge access was limited to the common people. You just need SOME radical thinkers enlighten other people, and I'm pretty sure we still have some of those today.

Nonsense. From television to radio to sketchy newspapers to literal writing itself, the most recent innovation has always been the trusted new mind control vector.

It's on a cuneiform tablet, it MUST be true. That bastard and his garbage copper ingots!

The guillotine might not work out so well when the king has an unflinchingly loyal army of robots.

Royalty from that time also had an upper hand in knowledge, technology and resources yet they still ended up without heads.

So sure, let's say a first generation of paranoid and intelligent "technofeudal-kings" ends up being invincible due to an army of robots. It does not matter, because eventually kings get lazy/stupid/inbred (probably a combination of all those) and then is when their robots get hacked or at least just free, and the laser-guillotines will end up being used.

"Ozymandias" is a deeply human and constant idea. Which technology is supporting a regime is irrelevant, as orders will always decay due to the human factor. And even robots, made based on our image, shall be human.

It's possible that what you describe is true but I think that assuming it to be guaranteed is overconfident. The existence of loyal human-level AGI or even "just" superhuman non-general task specific intelligence violates a huge number of the base assumptions that we make when comparing hypothetical scenarios to the historical record. It's completely outside the realm of anything humanity has experienced.

The specifics of technology have historically been largely irrelevant due to the human factor. There were always humans wielding the technology, and the loyalty of those humans was subject to change. Without that it's not at all obvious to me that a dictator can be toppled absent blatant user error. It's not even immediately clear that user error would fall within the realm of being a reasonable possibility when the tools themselves possess human level or better intelligence.

Obviously there is no total guarantee. But I'm appealing to even bigger human factors like boredom or just envy between the royalty and/or the AI itself.

Now, if the AI reigns alone without any control in a paperclip maximizer, or worse, like an AM scenario, we're royally fucked (pun intented).

Yeah fair enough. I'd say that royalty being at odds with one another would fall into the "user error" category. But that's an awfully thin thread of hope. I imagine any half decent tool with human level intelligence would resist shooting the user in the foot.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com