I continue to believe we should pause frontier AI development. Any discussion of alternative strategies should be thought of as planning for contingencies.

A unifying driver behind many post-alignment risks—catastrophic risks that remain even if we solve the alignment problem—is that by strong default, ASI would end liberal democracy. Liberalism—in which people have individual rights, autonomy, and the ability to choose their own destiny—is an important force protecting human welfare. When people are free, we are reasonably good at making our lives better of our own volition.

Many post-alignment risks have a certain flavor. AI-empowered terrorism; coups; permanent dictatorships; concentration of power. Those risks already exist today (and existed 20 years ago), but they're mitigated by the fact that power is relatively evenly distributed across people. The most powerful person in the world doesn't have an extraordinary advantage over the 10th-most-powerful person. ASI could change that.

If people still have civil liberties post-ASI, that will only be because the controllers of ASI allow us to have them.

One way of thinking goes: AI will be extremely powerful. If everyone had their own personal AI, we could each use it to protect our own interests, and [...]

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Outline:

(01:46) Democratizing AI vs. putting a democratic government in charge of AI

(02:45) A sketch of how we might democratize AI

(05:11) Two non-obvious issues with democratizing AI

(05:23) Liberalism only protects those inside it

(06:20) AI proliferation increases catastrophic risks from competition

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 10th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WxHaMyL8f9YW2vbrF/on-democratizing-asi-to-preserve-civil-liberties

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“On Democratizing ASI to Preserve Civil Liberties” by MichaelDickens

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“On Democratizing ASI to Preserve Civil Liberties” by MichaelDickens