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Comment by jyounker | Hacker News Reader

Cambridge Dictionary: Oligarch - One of a small group of powerful people who control a country or an industry.

And here's a frequently quoted study showing that the US is much closer to an oligopoly than pluralistic democracy: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/GilensPage2014.pdf

So, the definition and evidence say, yes.

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In what way do Amodei or Altman control a country or an industry?

For starters, the entire framing of AI in public discourse is based on the way that Amodei and Altman want them to be framed, with little consideration given to alternative ways of framing the current and prospective future capabilities of AI.

> For starters, the entire framing of AI in public discourse is based on the way that Amodei and Altman want them to be framed, with little consideration given to alternative ways of framing the current and prospective future capabilities of AI.

Assuming that is a threshold that means they are oligarchs (which seems like a huge stretch), I thought I'm seeing vigorous discourse and debate on this. Not just a single POV. You don't?

If the current path toward A(G/S)I continues, most of the technology will be owned by a small number of companies (and thus people) such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Their control could initially be economic, since they control the technologies which would conceivably replace much of human labor. It doesn't seem like a stretch to think that economic control could be extended to the political domain. Seems like an oligarchy to me.

> If the current path... Seems like an oligarchy to me.

You are arguing it might, not that it is.

Well yes, I'm speculating about the future. Given that, I have sketched a scenario in which a small number of people control a country or an industry, even if ASI can be controlled. If you disagree with the reasoning, I'd be interested to hear why. If not, I don't think any further discussion of my use of the term "oligarch" is going to be productive.

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