Automation and its Discontents: Leveraging Automation to Safeguard Humanity

2025/11/10 by Aksel Braanen Sterri, Sterri, Aksel, Peder Skjelbred +1
Social Sciences · #AI Alignment #AI Catastrophe #AI safety #Artificial Intelligence #Digital Economy and Work Transformation #Ethics and Social Impacts of AI #Existential Risk #Socio-political and Technological Issues #Superintelligent AI

paper · doi:10.18716/ojs/phai/2025.11844

openalex publication_date 2025/11/10 · openalex created_date 2025/12/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01

Abstract

This paper examines strategies for establishing a long-lasting ban on advanced AI research to mitigate existential risks from artificial intelligence. We evaluate Cappelen, Goldstein, and Hawthorne’s proposal to leverage AI accidents as warning shots and find it faces substantial ethical and practical challenges. As an alternative, we propose leveraging social unrest from rapid AI-driven automation. We argue that widespread job displacement could mobilise global labour movements against AI advancement, creating sufficient political pressure for an enforceable international ban on frontier AI research, and that this offers a more viable path to human survial in the face of advanced AI than current alternatives.

Related

• AI Safety Should Prioritize the Future of Work
• The Decision Path to Control AI Risks Completely: Fundamental Control Mechanisms for AI Governance
• To regulate or not: a social dynamics analysis of the race for AI supremacy
• The Role of Social Movements, Coalitions, and Workers in Resisting Harmful Artificial Intelligence and Contributing to the Development of Responsible AI
• The Dual Imperative: Innovation and Regulation in the AI Era