Doom argument without ASI or misalignment
First post. I have a Doom argument I’m not sure I’ve seen before. End conclusion at bottom is most of humanity dead but note the following about the premises listed below:
No ASI required
No misalignment scenario of AI with its creators required
No genocidal desires required by anyone
Premises
P1. Global power of a nation comes from military strength and international trade.
P2. Military strength and trade require labour and resources.
P3. Genociding your own population reduces available human labour.
P4. The majority of capital and supply chains are currently geared towards producing goods and services for human populations (food, clothing, housing, entertainment, healthcare, …).
P5. (AGI) Most human labour will be automated by AI.
P6. Resources currently devoted to sustaining a human population can be redirected to military and industrial production and trade exports.
P7. Nations compete for global power, and a many fold advantage in military and trade strength allows a nation to dominate or overrun those without it.
Backward looking conclusions
C1. From P1 + P2: Global power requires labour.
C2. From C1: Capital and supply chains geared towards producing goods and services for human populations are currently a positive return on investment for national leaders.
C3. From C1 + P3: Historically, genociding your own population has always reduced your global power and is a negative return on investment in terms of global power.
Forward looking conclusions
C4. From C1 + P5: Once labour is automated, global power no longer requires a human population.
C5. From C2 + C4: Capital and supply chains geared towards sustaining a human population will cease to be a positive return on investment in terms of global power.
C6. From C3 + C4: Genociding your own population will no longer reduce global power.
C7. From C5 + P6: Genociding your own population and redirecting those resources to military and industrial production increases global power.
C8. From P4 + C7: Because the majority of capital and supply chains currently serve human populations, that increase is many-fold rather than marginal.
C9. From C6 + C7 + C8: Genociding your own population becomes the rational move for maximising global power.
C10. From C9 + C8 + P7: A nation that refrains cannot compete—it is dominated or overrun by one that did not refrain.
C11. From C9 + C10: A pre-emption game begins. It requires only one nation to act first, after which every other nation must either follow or be overrun.
C12. From C11: A coalition of refrainer nations has to act against the first mover pre-emptively on a forecast, against a nuclear power, which is unlikely.
C13. From C11 + C12: Globally, nation states will have to either eliminate their human populations or be overrun by those that do.
C14. From C13: Humanity will largely be eliminated.
I haven’t seen your particular flavor of the argument that actively genociding your population to reclaim the resources they consume is incentivized, but the basic structure of this argument usually goes by the name of “gradual disempowerment” or similar and has been written about many times.
https://borretti.me/article/no-one-escapes-the-permanent-underclass
https://borretti.me/article/when-the-future-doesnt-need-us
I myself have written a less extreme version of this scenario in my essay Varieties of Doom, describing it as my modal scenario.
I think that on inertia alone if nothing else it seems unlikely that states will actively genocide their own populations to reclaim the resources, but I agree with the basic idea that on the current trajectory the biggest threat looks like states being in a situation where any resources they put into human welfare are resources that don’t go into autonomous weapons and supercomputers, and that this doesn’t require ASI.
Probably the biggest counterweight to something like this is that drones aren’t actually better strategic weapons than nukes, they’re just better on an individual battle basis than guns. So great powers that don’t have as many resources to put into drones can still retaliate with nuclear weapons against aggressors. Between this and the precedent of the Ukraine war, this could itself be a source of X-Risk in that it implies if you don’t want to be in this particular multipolar trap your nation must acquire nuclear weapons.
Thanks for the links!
Yeah it’s similar to gradual disempowerment except I’m arguing it will be a race rather than gradual. Whereas in the past genocide was negative ROI, as soon as we get mass joblessness, it’ll flip to positive ROI for the first time ever. And then like any good investment the incentives will turn it into a race especially with winner takes all.
Disempowerment in the limit is basically genocide so yeah that part is the same. I guess I’m arguing we’ll reach the limit though. All land and resources will be redirected and any food and water will go to exports or other applications. So people will basically be displaced and starve. And maybe if we’re enough of a hassle in terms mounting resistance, it might turn into an active genocide with drones or viruses
Good point about nukes. I imagine though the first nations to reach this level will all already be nuclear powers.