DiscoverLessWrong (30+ Karma)“Gradual Disempowerment Monthly Roundup” by Raymond Douglas
“Gradual Disempowerment Monthly Roundup” by Raymond Douglas

“Gradual Disempowerment Monthly Roundup” by Raymond Douglas

Update: 2025-10-06
Share

Description

Since publishing the original Gradual Disempowerment paper, my coauthors and I have been keeping an eye out for the obvious warning signs, as well as any rare glimmers of hope. Recently there's been enough that I figured it was worth collecting it all in one place in case anyone else was curious.

If it seems like there's appetite, we might make this a regular thing — I’ll put a comment at the bottom to react/reply to.

Governance By AI

Albania has appointed an AI called Diella as a government minister: a scaffolded system built by the Albanian government in collaboration with Microsoft, on top of OpenAI models. She recently addressed parliament for the first time, to some controversy.

Diella has been in use since January as a chatbot to help citizens with online government services. Apparently the hope is that Diella can slowly take more responsibility for public procurement [...]

---

Outline:

(00:33 ) Governance By AI

(03:05 ) Democracy Is Hard

(05:51 ) People Love AIs

(08:49 ) They Took Our Jobs

(12:03 ) Get Involved

(12:27 ) The Lighter Side

---


First published:

October 6th, 2025



Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dSG6ign997hjHC9mG/gradual-disempowerment-monthly-roundup


---


Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.


---

Images from the article:

rivers tweets:
Graph showing word frequency trends in House of Commons from 2007-2025, titled
Network visualization diagram showing clusters of AI relationship discussions on r/MyBoyfriendIsAI subreddit.  The visualization shows 5 main clusters: 1. Dating, Romance, Intimate AI Experiences 2. Community Support and Bonding 3.
Treemap visualization showing categories of user interactions and their percentages.  The chart breaks down different types of requests into main categories: - Writing (28.1%) - Practical Guidance (28.3%) - Seeking Information (21.3%) - Technical Help (7.5%) - Self-Expression (4.3%) - Multimedia (6.0%) - Other/Unknown (4.6%)  Each main category is further subdivided into more specific activities, like tutoring, translation, data analysis, and creative ideation.

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

Comments 
In Channel
loading
00:00
00:00
x

0.5x

0.8x

1.0x

1.25x

1.5x

2.0x

3.0x

Sleep Timer

Off

End of Episode

5 Minutes

10 Minutes

15 Minutes

30 Minutes

45 Minutes

60 Minutes

120 Minutes

“Gradual Disempowerment Monthly Roundup” by Raymond Douglas

“Gradual Disempowerment Monthly Roundup” by Raymond Douglas