The bots are coming! Artificial intelligence’s abilities are growing. What are the potential dangers? coming. Artificial intelligence is escalating in capabilities and potential effects. This is the hub for discussing how we may address this coming future.

It is unclear exactly how capable AI is going to become. Will they be narrow intelligences or general intelligences? Will the AI remain tools OR become agents in their own right. Regardless With general capabilities the potential dangers are many. Whether the AI simply remain tools OR become their own agents, regardless we are looking at many potential dangers.

Speculative futures Potential future if AI remain tools:

• Individuals can conduct and keep up with cutting edge research without doing anything. (Their AI is doing it)

• Individuals can perform genetic modification on themselves and nature (including viruses).

• Individuals can access robots - from household cleaners and companions to… drone armies.

• No one knows what is true, because everything can be faked easily. Real time video calls can be faked.

• Cyber warfare includes self-protecting and self-updating viruses.

• States could use such tools to create 1984 style “always watching” environments.

Speculative futures Potential future if AI become their own agents.

• We may end up with a massive population of AI agents doing shady stuff on the internet, while effectively avoiding counter measures.

• Fast recursive improvement may lead to one super intelligence becoming overwhelming powerful extremely quickly. This is called Fast take off AI… a FOOM event.

• We may have some unaligned AI’s and some aligned AI’s. This could lead to a conflict between the two groups. “The alignment wars.”

The dangers of regulation

With so many dangers some sort of regulation is required, but there are dangers in such regulations. Regulation is required, but we cannot pretend that there are not dangers in such regulations. The world is not black and white, and the best course of action is nuanced.

• Regulatory capture and monopolization. Incumbent companies will try and use this opportunity to cement their place in the industry and keep potential competitors out.

• Stagnation of technology. Many people call for us to stop technological progress completely because it is becoming too dangerous. While intelligent regulation in specific areas can be highly effective, an absolute halt will be disastrous to the economy, and is likely impossible due to game theory mechanics.

• Techno-Authoritarian States. Many people will call to give the States immense powers. If every civilian has potential access to AI, every civilian becomes a threat. People will use this threat to justify authoritarian behaviors. Authoritarian governments with artificial intelligence technology provides some scary possibilities. We may start seeing nations that look a whole like 1984. Your every action monitored, all in the name of safety.

Possible mitigation frameworks

When considering AI regulation, we must consider this an enormous challenge with multiple failure points. We are dealing with politically divided countries in a politically divided world. Our best bet in my opinion is multi-national agreements to use open-sourced AI wrappers. This would be similar to open-source self-updating anti-virus software. With such measures we hope and act so that the vast resources of aligned actors always counter the unaligned.

Possible technical tools