In your scenario where people deliberate while their AIs handle all the competition on their behalf, you note that persuasion is problematic: this is partly because, with intent-aligned AIs, the system is vulnerable to persuasion in that “what the operator intends” can itself become a target of attack during conflict.
Here is another related issue. In a sufficiently weird or complex situation, “what the operator intends” may not be well-defined—the operator may not know it, and the AI may not be able to infer it with confidence. In this case, clarifying what the human really wants seems to require more deliberation, which is what we were trying to screen off in the first place!
Furthermore, it seems to me that unbounded competition tends to continually spiral out, encompassing more and more stuff, and getting weirder and more complex: there are the usual arms race dynamics. There are anti-inductive dynamics around catching your opponent by surprise by acting outside their ontology. And there is also just the march of technology, which in your scenario hasn’t stopped, and which keeps creating new possibilities and new dimensions for us to grapple with around what we really want. (I’m using state-run social media disinformation campaigns as an intuition pump here.)
So in your scenario, I just imagine the human operators getting overwhelmed pretty quickly, unable to keep from being swept up in conflict. This is unless we have some kind of pretty strong limits on it.
Interesting essay!
In your scenario where people deliberate while their AIs handle all the competition on their behalf, you note that persuasion is problematic: this is partly because, with intent-aligned AIs, the system is vulnerable to persuasion in that “what the operator intends” can itself become a target of attack during conflict.
Here is another related issue. In a sufficiently weird or complex situation, “what the operator intends” may not be well-defined—the operator may not know it, and the AI may not be able to infer it with confidence. In this case, clarifying what the human really wants seems to require more deliberation, which is what we were trying to screen off in the first place!
Furthermore, it seems to me that unbounded competition tends to continually spiral out, encompassing more and more stuff, and getting weirder and more complex: there are the usual arms race dynamics. There are anti-inductive dynamics around catching your opponent by surprise by acting outside their ontology. And there is also just the march of technology, which in your scenario hasn’t stopped, and which keeps creating new possibilities and new dimensions for us to grapple with around what we really want. (I’m using state-run social media disinformation campaigns as an intuition pump here.)
So in your scenario, I just imagine the human operators getting overwhelmed pretty quickly, unable to keep from being swept up in conflict. This is unless we have some kind of pretty strong limits on it.