sethlazar: an AI permanent overclass would need mass oppression — or bread and circuses
sethlazar · x · 2026-10-15
In a thread with joshalbrecht and RuxandraTeslo, researcher sethlazar lays out his view on AI and power:
- People acting together can either overthrow tyrants by force, or make tyranny sustainable only through violence few would accept — at that point labor needn't come into it
- Anyone contemplating membership in a permanent overclass must consider whether they'd accept their position being propped up by mass oppression, because that's what it would take
- A far more likely outcome, he argues, is a kind of hyper capitalism: just enough bread and circuses to placate the masses, yielding a world like Urras in Le Guin's The Dispossessed
He thinks a paper seriously reviewing the social science evidence on this topic is worth writing — 'with world enough and time.'
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