AI and Leviathan: part I---the institutional economics of an intelligence explosion

Abstract

Hammond argues that AI functions as a general-purpose ``resolution multiplier’’ on information, creating security and privacy dynamics analogous to a world of universal x-ray glasses. Drawing parallels with the role of the printing press in the English Civil War, he contends that the democratization of AI capabilities could trigger either a surveillance-heavy Leviathan or institutional collapse, with minority-rule dynamics driving states toward pervasive security infrastructure comparable in scale to post-9/11 protocols but embedded in every layer of civil life. – AI-generated abstract.