On the list of most important things in the world, retaining global international peace and stability rates very highly; instability is a critical risk factor for global catastrophic or X-risk. [ā¦] Lethal (or nonlethal) AWSs could also increase statesā ability to perpetrate violence against its own citizens; whether this increases or decreases stability of those states, seems, however, unclear.
I definitely think that war and instability could serve as very important risk factors for global catastrophic and existential risk.
But it seems plausible to me that the odds of global, long-lasting totalitarianism are in the same general ballpark as the odds of some of the existential catastrophes typically worried about. (The only quantitative estimates of the former which Iām aware of come from Bryan Caplan. See also.) And such a regime would probably itself be an existential catastrophe (at least by Bostrom and Ordās definitions; see also).
As such, Iām hesitant to treat āincreased political stabilityā as always an unalloyed existential security factorāsome forms of it, in some contexts, could perhaps also be an important existential risk factor.
So if AWSs do increase the stability of autocratic statesāor decouple their stability from how much popular support they haveāthis could in my view perhaps be one of their most troubling consequences.
(But if one buys all of the above arguments, that might push in favour of focusing on other thingsāe.g., genetic engineering, surveillance, global governanceāeven more than it pushes in favour of focusing on AWSs.)
[This comment is sort-of a tangent.]
I definitely think that war and instability could serve as very important risk factors for global catastrophic and existential risk.
But it seems plausible to me that the odds of global, long-lasting totalitarianism are in the same general ballpark as the odds of some of the existential catastrophes typically worried about. (The only quantitative estimates of the former which Iām aware of come from Bryan Caplan. See also.) And such a regime would probably itself be an existential catastrophe (at least by Bostrom and Ordās definitions; see also).
As such, Iām hesitant to treat āincreased political stabilityā as always an unalloyed existential security factorāsome forms of it, in some contexts, could perhaps also be an important existential risk factor.
So if AWSs do increase the stability of autocratic statesāor decouple their stability from how much popular support they haveāthis could in my view perhaps be one of their most troubling consequences.
(But if one buys all of the above arguments, that might push in favour of focusing on other thingsāe.g., genetic engineering, surveillance, global governanceāeven more than it pushes in favour of focusing on AWSs.)