The purpose of this post is to argue for prioritizing the 'democratizing' of AGI, even before we've figured out alignment.

It's also an argument against favoring historically useful economic and social policies in the runup to a post AGI world.

The intended effect is to encourage people to start seriously discussing and organizing ways to increase the size of the "Minimum Viable Oligarchy" which may come packaged with an aligned AI, such that it includes all of humanity.

It also includes a potential draft of a solution to the lack of trust which has so far made cooperation difficult.

The main gist is to highlight the importance of developing reliable lie detectors.

A prepatory note: This article is not an anticapitalism rant. In fact, I believe Capitalism is one of the greatest forces of human cooperation yet conceived.

The Ready Answer to any Problem

I came upon a website called Capitalism Magazine.

I didn't notice the name until after I'd read the article. This was fortunate, because it made allowed me to read it with an impartial light.

The website had a hard Randian leaning, and the writers there shared some interesting views, but one point that kept cropping up was this: Capitalism has done more, by lifting billions out of poverty, than every act of kindness ever conceived.

This is a powerful argument. In fact, if one squints, one can see how it parallels my earlier statement about how capitalism was a great force for human cooperation.

However, saying that Capitalism (proper noun) solved extreme poverty only mimics the shape of understanding. Instead, let's look at exactly how a system built on human self interest managed to help so many.

The Randian is happy to answer this. It's because all those people in poverty were capable of doing economically useful work, which they were able to trade -- as was in line with their Rational self interest -- in exchange for better living conditions.

Even in cases where they couldn't bargain, it was in the rational self interest of the fortunate business moguls to create efficient societies, which helps everybody.

Besides which, truly Rational self interest involves treating other's kindly. Contributing even minutely to a violent and hateful society wouldn't benefit a person living in it, after all.

This is true, in a provisional manner.

But then comes AI.

And, suddenly, billions of pe...

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