I recently wrote 80k's new problem profile on extreme power concentration (with a lot of help from others - see the acknowledgements at the bottom). It's meant to be a systematic introduction to the risk of AI-enabled power concentration, where AI enables a small group of humans to amass huge amounts of unchecked power over everyone else. It's primarily aimed at people who are new to the topic, but I think it's also one of the only write-ups there is on this overall risk,[1]so might be interesting to others, too. Briefly, the piece argues that: Automation could concentrate the power to get stuff done, by reducing the value of human labour, empowering small groups with big AI workforces, and potentially giving one AI developer a huge capabilities advantage (if there's an intelligence explosion). This could lead to unprecedented concentration of political power via some combination of: Humans deliberately seizing power for themselves (as with AI-enabled coups) Some people becoming obscenely wealthy, such that government incentives are distorted in their favour or they simply outgrow the rest of the world The erosion of people's ability to understand what's going on and coordinate in their own interests (either through [...] The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. ---
First published:
December 12th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/qZrpjksTZBPA4cBr5/new-80k-problem-profile-extreme-power-concentration
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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