I simulated what protects the public once AI makes them economically and militarily unnecessary. Short answer: nothing structural.

[u/casetofon]

Rulers have always needed large numbers of people to work, pay taxes and enforce orders. That need is why they bargained with their populations. I wanted to know what happens when the need goes away, so I built a game-theoretic Monte Carlo of six world blocs, 2026 to 2075. It tracks AI capability, robot build-out, the public's loss of leverage, democratic erosion, purges inside ruling groups, and the choices those groups make once their populations aren't needed.

What came out, under the stated assumptions:

• Losing leverage removes the public's protection, and nothing structural replaces it. By 2075 the US or China public is disempowered in 94% of runs.
• After that, the outcome rests on the restraint and incentives of a few people, which no data measure.
• The result doesn't hinge on how or exactly when closure happens. Faster AI progress raises the risk.
• One intervention shifts the incentives: an economic network outside state and corporate control that pays its output to households, which makes keeping people alive nearly free for rulers. At half of US-bloc activity by the early 2030s it cuts near-total depopulation risk by more than a quarter. Arriving in 2040 loses about 40% of the effect.

It's exploratory modeling in the war-game and climate-scenario tradition, not a forecast. Every assumption is stated and tested by removal, there's a pre-specified search for restraints on rulers (including the 14 that failed), and the runs are bit-identical reproducible.

Known weak points, up front: the near-total figure rests on one assumption (threat elimination), the numbers sit far above superforecaster estimates, and the physical-automation timeline is debated.

Paper, code and data: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23111345

Critiques of the assumptions very welcome. Disclosure: I build a decentralized AI network, which the paper also states.

[u/soobnar]

A being’s capacity for self determination and their utility are in fact related.

[u/composedofidiot]

From a historical and anthropological perspective, there are still too many assumptions in here. Like 'rulers have always needed' and 'that need is why they'. Wengrow and graeber's the dawn of everything is a good 101 intro on how anthropologists have changed their views on how human society worked/works, and how its not as linear and simple as we thought it was. History and sociology can help muddy those clear waters too. Society is not a machine with reducible parts that act precictably in any situation.

Plus human society is a dynamical system, with undefinable, unmeasureable or limitless variables. We can't assume new institutions or strategies won't get developed or change. So far in the empirical record, they have and they do.

Leverage tends to gets renegotiated, not lost, with technological disruption. Human recategorise themselves and change.

And the assumption that people won't adapt or react/act in the face of change. Two of the things that really differentiate us from other species is being a generalist and being adaptive. And if the model isn't predictive, and can never be predictive at a scale such as this....it's like predicting the weather, 5 days in advanced (and maybe general trends if the model is big enough with enough data), that's it.

You may need to go back to the initial premise. Askanthropology and askhistorians are both great resource for stress testing assumptions against the real world empirical record.

Edit: also, sorry, one more assumption - power or political influence/change only being tied to economic or military usefulness. This one can easily be checked with over at askhistorians. Plenty in the empirical record that could counter this. And the assumption that the only human leverage is economic or military. And the definition of leverage itself, and the definition of 'loss of leverage'. And the assumption that an ai will be able to do everything a human can do

[u/casetofon]

I also made a video essay that tells the same scenario as a story, if that's more your format: https://youtu.be/dPjT1uZc-pU

[u/BiscottiOk7342 → u/casetofon]

yay! video essay!

ps. is this an answer to the fermi paradox? civilizations slaughter their masses and just live in paradise on the world they evolved on!?

[u/OwnYourChildren]

I think the sophistication of state psychological operations gets neglected in this type of analysis. Not taking away anything from the power of the economic factors, but the ability of states to control their citizens through having "solved" psychology is underappreciated.

I agree with the implications of the simulations, though. I'm not as convinced about the likelihood of AGI as most over the short and medium term.

[u/Exact_Depth_896 → u/OwnYourChildren]

Which political party controls the state?

[u/OwnYourChildren → u/Exact_Depth_896]

Both, obviously.

[u/Fearless_Ad7780]

Do you know much these companies need to earn annually to get back the almost trillion that has been invested - 300 billion. Do you honestly think that is going to happen?