Various people are worried about AI causing extreme power concentration of some form, for example via:

Powergrabs
The intelligence curse
Gradual disempowerment

I have been talking to some of these people and trying to sense-make about ‘power concentration’.

These are some notes on that, mostly prompted by some comment exchanges with Nora Ammann (in the below I’m riffing on her ideas but not representing her views). Sharing because I found some of the below helpful for thinking with, and maybe others will too.

(I haven’t tried to give lots of context, so it probably makes most sense to people who’ve already thought about this. More the flavour of in progress research notes than ‘here's a crisp insight everyone should have’.)

AI risk as power concentration

Sometimes when people talk about power concentration it sounds to me like they are talking about most of AI risk, including AI takeover [...]

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Outline:

(00:55) AI risk as power concentration

(03:58) Power concentration as the undermining of checks and balances

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First published:
September 11th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/z7gaxhzeyyqyXxrcH/sense-making-about-extreme-power-concentration

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Two-axis diagram showing AI versus human power dynamics and influence methods.

The diagram uses a quadrant system with green axis labels

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“Sense-making about extreme power concentration” by rosehadshar

LessWrong (30+ Karma)