https://www.secondbest.ca/p/ninety-five-theses-on-ai
VII. Technological transitions cause regime changes
Even under best case scenarios, an intelligence explosion is likely to induce state collapse / regime change and other severe collective action problems that will be hard to adapt to in real time.
Government bureaucracies are themselves highly exposed to disruption by AI, and will need “firmware-level” reforms to adapt and keep-up, i.e. reforms to civil service, procurement, administrative procedure, and agency structure.
Congress will need to have a degree of legislative productivity not seen since FDR.
Inhibiting the diffusion of AI in the public sector through additional layers of process and oversight (such as through Biden’s OMB directive) tangibly raises the risk of systemic government failure.
The rapid diffusion of AI agents with approximately human-level reasoning and planning abilities is likely sufficient to destabilize most existing U.S. institutions.
The reference class of prior technological transitions (agricultural revolution, printing press, industrialization) all feature regime changes to varying degrees.
Seemingly minor technological developments can affect large scale social dynamics in equilibrium (see: Social media and the Arab Spring or the Stirrup Thesis).