The AI catastrophe will not come from a villain or an accident but from Moloch—the structural logic of multi-polar competition that forces every actor to sacrifice human values for competitive advantage.
Overview
In multi-actor competition, any actor that pauses for safety is outcompeted by actors who don't. This creates a race to the bottom where the collective result is something nobody individually chose.
Classification
- Geographic concentration
- Global; strongest in rationalist/EA communities (Bay Area, Oxford)
- Tags
- governance
- security
- economy
- Scenario type (full)
- Dystopian / Meta-scenario (structural rather than technological)
- Human position
- Subordinated to structural logic; humans are individually rational but collectively trapped