46 - Tom Davidson on AI-enabled Coups

Could AI enable a small group to gain power over a large country, and lock in their power permanently? Often, people worried about catastrophic risks from AI have been concerned with misalignment risks. In this episode, Tom Davidson talks about a risk that could be comparably important: that of AI-enabled coups.

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Transcript: https://axrp.net/episode/2025/08/07/episode-46-tom-davidson-ai-enabled-coups.html

Topics we discuss, and timestamps:

0:00:35 How to stage a coup without AI

0:16:17 Why AI might enable coups

0:33:29 How bad AI-enabled coups are

0:37:28 Executive coups with singularly loyal AIs

0:48:35 Executive coups with exclusive access to AI

0:54:41 Corporate AI-enabled coups

0:57:56 Secret loyalty and misalignment in corporate coups

1:11:39 Likelihood of different types of AI-enabled coups

1:25:52 How to prevent AI-enabled coups

1:33:43 Downsides of AIs loyal to the law

1:41:06 Cultural shifts vs individual action

1:45:53 Technical research to prevent AI-enabled coups

1:51:40 Non-technical research to prevent AI-enabled coups

1:58:17 Forethought

2:03:03 Following Tom's and Forethought's research

Links for Tom and Forethought:

Tom on X / Twitter: https://x.com/tomdavidsonx

Tom on LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/users/tom-davidson-1

Forethought Substack: https://newsletter.forethought.org/

Will MacAskill on X / Twitter: https://x.com/willmacaskill

Will MacAskill on LessWrong: https://www.lesswrong.com/users/wdmacaskill

Research we discuss:

AI-Enabled Coups: How a Small Group Could Use AI to Seize Power: https://www.forethought.org/research/ai-enabled-coups-how-a-small-group-could-use-ai-to-seize-power

Seizing Power: The Strategic Logic of Military Coups, by Naunihal Singh: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/31450

Experiment using AI-generated posts on Reddit draws fire for ethics concerns: https://retractionwatch.com/2025/04/28/experiment-using-ai-generated-posts-on-reddit-draws-fire-for-ethics-concerns/

Episode art by Hamish Doodles: hamishdoodles.com