If AGI is concentrated in a few US companies, other nations could lose their economic sovereignty. When American AGI can produce goods far cheaper than local human labor, economies like the UK's could collapse. They would become economically dependent "client states," reliant on American technology for almost all production, with wealth accruing to Silicon Valley.

By default, countries that do not develop their own frontier AI models will experience all the negative societal disruptions, such as job displacement, while capturing minimal economic or strategic benefits. They get the risks without the rewards, the opposite of the US and China.

For some policy experts, the most realistic nightmare scenario is not a rogue superintelligence but a socio-economic collapse into techno-feudalism. In this future, AI concentrates power and wealth, creating a rentier state with a small ruling class and a large population with minimal economic agency or purpose.

Even if AI remains aligned and power isn't dangerously concentrated, humanity could still face gradual disempowerment. In this scenario, humans are simply competed out of the economy and lose agency in a world that becomes unfriendly to them. Currently, few proposals exist to prevent this outcome.

Relying solely on imported AI technology from superpowers like the US and China is a path to economic and political dependency. Governments must foster local AI innovation and infrastructure to maintain economic sovereignty and global competitiveness.

Just as oil wealth allows elites in some countries to ignore their populations, control over AI could empower a new elite to maintain power without cultivating human productivity, leading to societal decay and loss of democratic legitimacy.

Like oil-rich nations that neglect their people to focus on resource extraction, AI-powered nations face an 'intelligence curse.' They will be incentivized to invest in AI, which drives GDP and power, while divesting from humanity and creating a 'permanent useless class.'

The 1990s 'Sovereign Individual' thesis is a useful lens for AI's future. It predicts that highly leveraged entrepreneurs will create immense value with AI agents, diminishing the power of nation-states, which will be forced to compete for these hyper-productive individuals as citizens.

Even with perfectly aligned AI, humanity faces "gradual disempowerment." In a future economy, humans are resource-intensive. Nations that prioritize efficient AI workers over human populations could gain an insurmountable economic advantage, marginalizing humanity through normal competitive pressures.