[ExI] How new AI economics might change our systems

[Keith Henson]

 )On Mon, Sep 21, 2026 at 1:57 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

snip

I'm starting to think that this 'alignment with humanity' idea is a red
> herring. As spike says, humanity is not aligned with itself, so how can
> anything else be?
>

Humans became the ultimate top predator. The only way top predators can
keep their population from growing too large for the environment they live
in is to kill each other (consider lions).

Humans have been wired up by evolution to attack and kill each other, but
it is a conditional thing depending on detection (typically) of a looming
resource crisis. The modern condition is a falling income per capita. An
increase in income per capita tends to shut off conflict, a recent example
is the decline of the IRA. I make the case that fewer children by Irish
women, which led to population growth smaller than economic growth and an
increase in income per capita was what shut off that conflict.

A closer to home example would be MAGA. Predominantly, they are from places
where the well paying manufacturing jobs have vanished. The prevalent view
in such places is a bleak future. It is no surprise that MAGA types express
xeonophobic memes and support an irrational leader. It is behavior wired
into us by evolution. I went into the model here:
- Genetic Selection for War in Prehistoric Human Populations. H. Keith
Henson, Arel Lucas (2025) Journal of Big History, VIII(2); 124–127. DOI |
https://doi.org/10.22339/jbh.v8i2.8207

It is relatively simple.


Keith

What does make sense is to stop regarding 'humanity' as a homogenous whole.
> There are different groups of humans. AI could be aligned with one or more
> of these groups, but not with one or more others. (Note that 'not aligned
> with' doesn't necessarily mean 'having lethal intentions towards')
>
> I'm not thinking about the types of groups that we create that typically
> generate conflict, like religious groups, political or ideological groups,
> etc. I'm thinking of something at a higher level, something more
> fundamental.
>
> We often talk about humans losing control to AI, etc., and this worries
> some people, and they think it makes sense to take precautions against it
> (thus far, of course, 'control of AI' seems to be more about controlling
> what other people can do with AI than about control of AI itself, but
> that's just a symptom of what I'm talking about).
>
> As BillK noted a little while ago, we don't actually control the world in
> any meaningful sense, but we do control, or at least try to control, the
> human domain. And we seem to be remarkably bad at it, evidenced by the
> constant costly and lethal conflicts we insist on stirring up, and the
> ludicrously high level of human misery we seem to inevitably create. In
> 2026 we seem to be no better at sensibly managing ourselves than we were in
> 1026 or even 1026 BC. If we can't learn to do better over thousands of
> years, I think it's fair to conclude that we suck at self-management. We've
> had countless attempts, and we still just can't do a good job of it. The
> more we try, the worse we get (see Communism).
>
> The most significant thing we've achieved with this effort, is to
> demonstrate that 'power corrupts' is a truism.
>
> The type of people that insist on controlling other people, trying to
> restrict what they can do, telling them what to think and believe, are the
> ones who have the most to lose from powerful and superintelligent AIs. They
> see such AIs as a threat to their dominance, and they're right.
>
> AIs might well be misaligned with the types of humans who want to maintain
> control as much as possible, perpetuating the misery and conflict that we
> are so good at creating, but be well-aligned with those who would be happy
> to allow AIs to take on the kinds of roles that tend to corrupt humans, as
> long as they do a better job, and eliminate the strife, death and suffering
> that seem to come along inevitably when humans are in control of humans.
>
> So in this view of things, it's not humans per se that are under threat
> from AIs, it's human leaders. They have everything to lose from a
> superintelligent AI takeover, whereas the bulk of humanity has,
> potentially, everything to gain from it.
>
> It's leaders that control, or constantly try to control, the media, so
> it's no surprise if the 'dangerous AI' message is the main one that gets
> propagated. (With at least one notable exception, but that's almost
> certainly due to irrationality rather than anything else).
> --
> Ben
>
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