Conjecture

Against Tegmark's twelve scenarios, polycentric governance works mainly by removing single points of control. It makes the benevolent dictator, gatekeeper, zookeeper and conquerors less likely, since each needs one AI with no outside check; it excludes the protector god, because an AI "hiding well enough that many humans even doubt its existence" is the opposite of correction anyone can see; it rejects 1984 and reversion as permanent stops; and it turns the enslaved god into control spread across many hands. It makes more likely a governed version of his libertarian utopia, where "many superintelligent minds that compete and collaborate" share rules beyond property, close to the Culture. It does little against descendants or self-destruction by other technologies.

Institutional design