Could a totalitarian regime conquer the entire world and lock in its power forever?
This is a particular type of unrecoverable dystopia: a future in which humanity survives, but forever loses its potential to grow and flourish.
In this video, we explore which technologies might make this possibility more likely, but also how we might shape technological development in order to prevent it, without giving up the global coordination we need against threats like misaligned AI and engineered pandemics.
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The Precipice and unrecoverable dystopia:
World empires and colonies in 1914:
Printing and the spread of the Reformation:
Printing and Protestants:
European wars of religion:
Censorship in the Russian Empire:
Das Kapital Comes to Russia:
LLMs and mass censorship:
Reconstructing language from brain activity (Nature Neuroscience):
Brain activity decoder (UT Austin):
Brain-computer interfaces as an existential risk:
Privacy-preserving COVID exposure notifications:
The mixed success of COVID exposure-notification apps:
Democracy and long-term risk:
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If you'd like to help improve humanity's chances at a thriving future, you can learn more and donate here: https://givingwhatwecan.org/rational
Giving What We Can has vetted a list of charities and funds from expert charity evaluators and grantmakers, so that you can help fund research and initiatives designed to address huge and incredibly difficult global risks such as stable totalitarianism, misaligned AI, pandemics, and nuclear weapons. Not everyone can work on these problems directly, but you don't need to change your career to make a difference.
What would they even do with so much power? why can't they be happy with just a cup of coffee and jazz and rain and blankets!
Absolute control is impossible, not because people cannot be influenced, but because people are not cogs or components in a system, AI technology could successfully read the thoughts and feelings of people, but it cannot force people to stop feeling or thinking those things, it can only account for when those emotions and thoughts emerge. A stable totalitarian society depends on everybody obeying the system, but obedience is not the same as mind control, and that human gap is something tyrants cannot successfully close without risking infighting, resistance, rivalry, rebellion and collapse.
A system can suppress human agency, but it cannot completely abolish it without also undermining the network of human cooperation that allows the system to function.
The tyrant's mistake is assuming that controlling the environment means controlling what emerges from it. When humans are not machines that maintain the same beliefs every generation.
Other rival tyrants wouldn't want absolute control, because it means risking being controlled themselves, and there's the paradox behind it.
The more the system tries to abolish human agency, the more it risks destroying the very thing that makes the system capable of functioning.
its called judaism and the world is guna find out
Half – Life 2 combine ahhh future
literally 1984
WHAT KIND OF DICTATORSHIP? 😂
A global right-wing dictatorship would lead to WW3
A global left-wing dictatorship
would lead to a type 1 civilization.
im scarred now thank you
Gng don’t give them ideas
Stop being an AI apologist. You can't partially put that genie back in the bottle.
I think the only place that would like to do this is north korea
20 years after the war. One freeman returns.
I have little hope in humanity overcoming its own greed. LLMs are perfect examples. Scam Altman has famously put safety and security last. It's progress at all costs. LLMs are still stupid little things despite the glazers and AI bros telling us otherwise; yet they provide a window into the future. We will absolutely obliterate ourselves if it means some tech bro can get absurdly rich. We have absolutely no failsafe mechanisms in place.
North Korea is proof that a stable totalitarian regime is possible. No fancy technology needed.
Capitalism today 🥀
Holy Peak
As a living citizen of supper earth I would never let a dictatorship hold power.
2500 A.D.? Golly, sucks for those people! Slap my ass and call me a horse because I sure am one hell of a lucky guy to live in the 21st century!
buddy, you're living it.
Interesting video, truly hopeless stuff.
Have you met my friend, FPV drone with a "surprise" taped to the front?
the boot needs to keep applying force, eventually it'll get tired.
Dictatorships emerge out of crisis. If country hit a poverty, unequality, marginalization of majority, or many other causes if not all in the same time, radical movements appear and dictator can even be elected by people like Adolf Hitler in Germany.
i think democracy is good for this purpose but its not general or broad enough of an idea.
I think better mindset is "Flexibility/adaptability" and being able to change.
so no suffering wether its hidden or not, is permenant.
the things to think from there would be "what kind of change" "how to change" "how to smartly change", then it gets more complicated and interesting to talk about i think.
That we live it today
you did not just give props to neuralink and call mind uploading a benefit
wait ai could be easily fooled unless it was detecting movement. Just hide in a cardboard box, quite literally
Well, whats the point in scanning every citizens mind? You end up like the Kmer in Cambodia, killing everybody. I think at some point, total control becomes pointless. If you leave humans nothing private I think they will either uprise and revolt (no matter the chances) or commit suicide. So in my opinion this is a very unlikely scenario.
No king rules forever
I'm afraid
you know a video is good when 4 minutes in i want to crash out on the creator, this is the first time ever, therefore making your video one of the best iv ever watched, Cheers G
This video was so unique, the animation and the sound effects all came in together. Super cool!
The animation and colorwork is insane
this well immediately gets down because of Vietnam and Philippines and other countries due to there behavior to FIGHT BACK FOR FREEDOM!
Command economies are trash economies.
That alone would do a global totalitarian state in.
If the emperor of mankind is invoked it can
11:17 Friendly reminder that cops can legally unlock your phone with face recognition but cannot compel you to unlock your phone with your PIN or password. Honestly you should have a PIN or password on your phone regardless, it's just way safer.
Isn't this just warhammer 40k?
So 1984?
War is peace
“1984” be like: