Google drops pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance

Many will hate to hear this but the only solution is one world government or at least a unipolar order that reduces the survival need to participate in arms races. Arms race dynamics between nations will be the end of our species.

Some country leaders do think this. But they're very particular about having that one world government named "USA" or "Russia".

Unfortunately, the only way to keep things "fair" and "equitable" so nobody revolts is to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator.

In other words, everything would be terrible, but at least it'd be terrible for everyone.

Until we realized we could sacrifice some for the betterment of the rest, find a way to rationalize it, and then we throw it all out the window.

I think having nations competing against each other is a good thing. Governments become corrupted and collapse: it would be a shame if the only world government fell into the hands of a dictator.

That being said the only way I could imagine we'd get a single world order is one country dominating everyone else, just like superpowers and regional powers dominate their respective parts of the globe.

Never ever ever are people just going to give up their control out of some form of "enlightenment" that has never existed among the human race.

correct. this is why i support maintaining the American-run world order by all means we have at our disposal. it's both the best outcome for our citizens (therefore our government should pursue it) and the best outcome for the world at large. we will never accept (nor should we) the sort of one-world power that would be necessary to block defection so us running the thing is the least-bad option.

America is the only nation that currently has consolidated global power behind an even vaguely free nation.

and yes, America has done that for the "pax Americana" period. unfortunately we were short-sighted and allowed people too much free reign to be stupid and anti-American.

Would you have said the same thing to people living in warring tribal societies if they hoped that local tribes would cease existing and coalesce together into a single nation state? That's bad because it reduces competition, right? But overall it was very good because tribal conflict and barriers to movement and trade act as a massive tax on anything we would both call good.

Unprecedented levels of peace in Europe happened not because of competing nation states, but in spite of that competition. It was the unipolar control exerted by the US and the destruction of the Soviet Union and the creation of the EU (a proto pan-European state) that caused the 1990s. There was one and only pole -- the West. Not 2 (or more) different adversaries with opposed interests engaging in an arms race.

As we go back to a world with more fragmented and distributed power, we will get more war and more arms races. An especially toxic setup in the age of AI.

This doesn't have to be a binary, anyways. You could set it up as some kind of federation where there's still economic competition. Just not military competition.

There is a difference between consolidation to a few different powers and consolidation to just one.

Also, AFAIK all of those nations consolidated because of military conquest. Countless European wars and empires.

The EU isn't like that, but they're an alliance and not one country. You can't just leave a country like England did.