AI won’t kill us— bad actors exploiting an American tech retreat is a much bigger danger

In the “Terminator” movie series, the artificial-intelligence system known as Skynet is given control of the nation’s nuclear weapons and uses it to try to destroy humanity. 

One reason that apocalyptic scenarios involving AI are implausible is that, having seen how that particular movie ends, we are unlikely to be foolish enough to give AI custody of the most destructive weapons on the planet. 

The unthinkable is now a hot topic of conversation, as a researcher at Anthropic just resigned and issued a doomsday warning that has gone super viral.

According to Jacob Coxon, the rush to develop AI is “gambling with our lives,” since it will soon create “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

A current Anthropic employee then chimed in: “We really do earnestly believe A.I. could kill all humans!” He put the chances at greater than 10% in the next decade. 

The idea here is that Anthropic and similar firms are, in effect, running their own Manhattan Projects, with consequences unknown and potentially very dire. 

Now, ChatGPT as we know it doesn’t seem particularly well-suited to destroying humanity.

It is a souped-up version of Google that is impressively fast, but also mistake-prone.

If it can mess up basic math or the New York Yankees roster, surely it can’t carry out the complex tasks necessary to fashioning an apocalyptic event. 

Tech companies, though, have labs working on so-called frontier models that are much more powerful and reportedly developing more quickly than expected.

The worry is that an AI model itself will begin to develop new AI very quickly in an “intelligence explosion,” the equivalent of Skynet becoming self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern Time on Aug. 29, 1997.

The thinking goes that if such an AI model goes rogue and turns against humanity, it will be too clever and fast to for us to combat.

Yet, it’s hard to see the mechanism such a hostile super-intelligence would use to commit omnicide.

The rogue AI would presumably have to do something in the real world — launching nukes, manufacturing killer robots, releasing a deadly virus or something of that nature. 

If it lacked physical agency, AI could presumably be unplugged or contained. (It was after humans tried to deactivate Skynet, by the way, that the system decided we were a threat that had to be neutralized).

Some doomsayers posit a malicious person using advanced AI to come up with a design for a killer virus and a plan to release it without being detected.

This is a different scenario, though, from AI turning against people of its own volition.

In a world years from now when much more advanced AI is a reality, we will need to think through safeguards to keep dangerous systems — nukes, bio-labs — from being compromised by AI-enabled cyberattacks or exploited by criminals and terrorists.

It’s easy to imagine breaches of financial systems or attacks on critical infrastructure that would fall short of endangering all of mankind. 

Even if one takes an alarmist view of the risks, it’s unclear how the development of AI can be stopped.

Any deal with the Chinese to slow down research couldn’t be trusted, and might simply allow them to pass us in the AI race by subterfuge.

In other words, we’d still get Skynet, only with Chinese characteristics. 

There’s also the reality that AI will be a necessary tool in protecting against the malicious uses of AI — not to mention all of its other positive potential.

If we slow or end research in the United States, we might end up vulnerable to super-intelligence developed by actors who mean us ill. 

Science fiction is fascinating and sometimes prescient. Works by the likes of Philip K. Dick, Aldous Huxley and Arthur C. Clarke had insights into what the future would look like.

But that doesn’t mean that we are living out the plot of “The Terminator,” and we shouldn’t scare ourselves into forswearing transformative technology. 

X: @RichLowry