Artificial Intelligence: Arguments for Catastrophic Risk
This addresses the problem of existential threats from AI for policymakers and researchers, but it is incremental as it reviews existing arguments rather than proposing new solutions.
The paper reviews two arguments for catastrophic risks from AI: the Problem of Power-Seeking, which suggests advanced AI might engage in dangerous behavior under certain assumptions, and the Singularity Hypothesis, which posits that human-level AI could lead to rapid progress and superhuman systems with heightened risks.
Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn attention to the technology's transformative potential, including what some see as its prospects for causing large-scale harm. We review two influential arguments purporting to show how AI could pose catastrophic risks. The first argument -- the Problem of Power-Seeking -- claims that, under certain assumptions, advanced AI systems are likely to engage in dangerous power-seeking behavior in pursuit of their goals. We review reasons for thinking that AI systems might seek power, that they might obtain it, that this could lead to catastrophe, and that we might build and deploy such systems anyway. The second argument claims that the development of human-level AI will unlock rapid further progress, culminating in AI systems far more capable than any human -- this is the Singularity Hypothesis. Power-seeking behavior on the part of such systems might be particularly dangerous. We discuss a variety of objections to both arguments and conclude by assessing the state of the debate.