[BonsaiDen]

That however goes both ways, making it also far easier to install a dictatorship etc. because you don't have to replace tens of thousands of police officers with regime loyal ones.

We're walking on razors edge here, it only takes one "election gone wrong" and we might find ourselves in a nightmare with no escape.

[icebraining]

When has a dictatorship been prevented by the lack of loyal police officers?

[tivert]

Dictatorships have fallen because formerly loyal police officers stopped being loyal. It's unlikely that kind of personal evolution will happen with a machine.

[icebraining]

Can you give me an example of such a dictatorship?

[paganel]

Ceasescu’s fall was mostly caused by part of Romanian Securitate going against him, the same Securitate that was controlling the local police force. So much so that Ceausescu was still in power on December 21st 1989 when the local police was actively repressing the anti-Ceausescu street protests but had to escape by helicopter the following day once the same police force stopped fighting and killing the Romanian protesters.

[icebraining]

So nobody had to replace tens of thousands of police officers to change the regime?

In my opinion, that just undermines the point. Nothing would have changed if the Securitate was controlling a bunch of AI sensors and such rather than a bunch of police officers.

[tivert]

Pretty much every single one that fell through internal unrest. For a dictatorship to fall, it's security apparatus needs to stop performing its function of suppressing dissent and revolt.

Humans aren't machines. The police of a dictatorship, at some point, will have to confront an order to gun down protesters and the like to preserve the regime. Even if they're ideologically committed, they might recoil the order to kill and let the regime fall.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/02/protests-how-d...

> And the use of violence by the regime under challenge, argue both Petersen and Sadiki, acts as a further crucial trigger for escalation by protesters against the regime. It is not simply because the state use of violence - whether in Bahrain or Romania, Egypt or Libya - acts as reminder of its brutal nature at a time when it is more vulnerable than it realises. It is also because the use of state violence confronts those still part of the state with a moral and strategic question: whether to tolerate the use of force and hope the regime survives, or peel away and join the opposition.

> "It is the other side of the story to that of those rebelling," says Petersen. "There are different considerations for those in the military, police or special forces, defined by their role. They are required to make a choice: whether they can switch sides and hope the people accept their new narrative in the new world after the regime, or stick by it to the end.

> "Whether you defect to the opposition depends on these differential kinds of moral calculus. Ordinary soldiers, for instance, have their own calculus. And if they decide not to fire on protesters that sends a signal to the higher-ups in the military. Then pretty soon you might see the interest of the military changing."

> Petersen, however, has one caveat. That this kind of negotiation in an organisation like the military does not necessarily hold true if there is the early and "crushing" use of violence.

[scrollaway]

AI-driven justice etc is lowering the cost of dictatorship. It's literally lowering the barrier to installing an authoritarian regime, that's what's scary about it. (ref. "The Dictator's Handbook", my favourite political book, as to why this is a problem)

[reaperducer]

If you include the military in the definition of "police," then just Google "failed coup" and take your pick.

[icebraining]

No, I don't think the two should be conflated.

[reaperducer]

Depends on the country. In some countries they're the same agency.