CBS explains gradual disempowerment, a risk with no machine uprising

On 19 October, CBS News published a report on "gradual disempowerment", an idea that comes from a January 2025 research paper. It argues that AI could replace human work and decisions step by step without anyone planning it, because it pays companies to do so.

According to Jan Kulveit, a co-author of that paper, states that stop needing their citizens to pay taxes or fight would be less likely to be democratic. Researcher Margaret Mitchell, of Hugging Face, warns that people who stop practising a skill end up depending on the machine. She proposes "strategic friction", so that people stay in the loop at key steps.

These are expert opinions and scenarios, not measured results.