Dan Hendrycks (Center for AI Safety), Eric Schmidt (former Google CEO), and Alexandr Wang (Scale AI CEO) have a new paper out, Superintelligence Strategy, which argues that nation states can and will constrain other nation states’ pursuit of destabilizing superintelligence by detecting and disabling such superintelligence efforts relatively easily through covert cyberattacks or kinetic strikes on data centers.
The relative ease of (cyber) espionage and sabotage of a rival’s destabilizing AI project yields a form of deterrence. Much like nuclear rivals concluded that attacking first could trigger their own destruction, states seeking an AI monopoly while risking a loss of control must assume competitors will maim their project before it nears completion.
Superintelligence Strategy at 15.
The paper argues that “MAIM deterrence” should be deliberately formalized rather than left to chance. For example, countries might clearly communicate escalation ladders or provide transparency into data centers.
Unfortunately that paper presents three alternative strategies (no restrictions, moratorium, and monopoly strategy) simplistically and doesn’t engage with more nuanced versions of these approaches. Indeed, other commentators have suggested that superintelligences might counter other superintelligences in an equilibrium that more closely resembles the nuclear deterrence strategy the authors discuss.