#239 – Rose Hadshar on why automating all human labour will break our political system

About this episode

Rose Hadshar discusses the potential political implications of automating human labor with advanced AI.

The most important political question in the age of advanced AI might not be who wins elections. It might be whether elections continue to matter at all. That’s the view of Rose Hadshar , researcher at Forethought, who believes we could see extreme, AI-enabled power concentration without a coup or dramatic ‘end of democracy’ moment. She foresees something more insidious: an elite group with access to such powerful AI capabilities that the normal mechanisms for checking elite power — law, elections, public pressure, the threat of strikes — cease to have much effect. Those mechanisms could continue to exist on paper, but become ineffectual in a world where humans are no longer needed to execute even the largest-scale projects. Almost nobody wants this to happen — but we may find ourselves unable to prevent it. If AI disrupts our ability to make sense of things, will we even notice power getting severely concentrated, or be able to resist it? Once AI can substitute for human labour across the economy, what leverage will citizens have over those in power? And what does all of this imply for the institutions we’re relying on to prevent the worst outcomes? Rose has answers, and they’re…

People in this episode

Host: The 80,000 Hours team

Guest: Rose Hadshar

Topics covered

• AI
• politics
• automation
• power concentration
• democracy
• checks and balances

Keywords

• AI
• political system
• automation
• power dynamics
• democracy
• checks and balances
• human labor

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Forethought

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