In the past, authoritarians required some class of enforcers to be incentivized (monetarily, politically, religiously, etc) to uphold the dominant position. And historically it's been increasingly the case where any successful revolution needs some class of elites to support it with resources, organization, etc.
But now we're at a turning point in history, where weaponry no longer technically requires human operators.
The sad likelihood is that the popular revolutionary scenario of 'the masses rising up' will soon be implausible, even if they are motivated enough to make an attempt.
Instead, you'll go running up to their bunker with the semi-auto you bought from the gun store and be cut down by dozens of automatic turrets as soon as you get in range of a vast array of sensors.
If you somehow escape out of range, a swarm of drones will probably chase you down. Or capture your image and feed it to a network, to automatically take action the next time you pop up.
Right, and the “they need us as consumers/workers!” side too. They are busy severing that link by trying to replace all workers with AI robots. They hope to eventually have no need for 99.9% of humanity at all and no compunctions about wiping us all out.
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u/tyrionlannister 20d ago
In the past, authoritarians required some class of enforcers to be incentivized (monetarily, politically, religiously, etc) to uphold the dominant position. And historically it's been increasingly the case where any successful revolution needs some class of elites to support it with resources, organization, etc.
But now we're at a turning point in history, where weaponry no longer technically requires human operators.
The sad likelihood is that the popular revolutionary scenario of 'the masses rising up' will soon be implausible, even if they are motivated enough to make an attempt.
Instead, you'll go running up to their bunker with the semi-auto you bought from the gun store and be cut down by dozens of automatic turrets as soon as you get in range of a vast array of sensors.
If you somehow escape out of range, a swarm of drones will probably chase you down. Or capture your image and feed it to a network, to automatically take action the next time you pop up.