I think there’s a worldwide trend toward more authoritarian leaders, which contributed to both these events. And it should raise our probability of e.g. Turkey or China doing something silly. But where this trend comes from, I’m not sure. It certainly predates the current AI wave. It could be due to social media making people more polarized or something. But then again there were plenty of worse dictators in history, long before social media or electricity. So maybe what’s happening now is regression to the mean, and nice democracy was an anomaly in place and time.
I think there’s a worldwide trend toward more authoritarian leaders, which contributed to both these events. And it should raise our probability of e.g. Turkey or China doing something silly. But where this trend comes from, I’m not sure. It certainly predates the current AI wave. It could be due to social media making people more polarized or something. But then again there were plenty of worse dictators in history, long before social media or electricity. So maybe what’s happening now is regression to the mean, and nice democracy was an anomaly in place and time.