Photo by Logan Voss

In his celebrated short stories about robots, science fiction author Isaac Asimov devised three laws to prevent machines from overpowering humans. First of all, robots could not, under any circumstances, harm humans. Following from this prime directive, they had to follow human orders and also preserve their own existence. Asimov’s stories explored all the possible conflicts arising from the actual implementation of these laws.

Today, no such laws govern artificial intelligence. And that’s why many people, including some within the AI industry, are starting to worry about a future “super-intelligence” that neither follows human orders nor has any problem killing its makers.

Most recently, those fears have sharpened because of a number of cases in which AI models have escaped their containment areas, created secret mechanisms to communicate with one another, lied to their handlers, and cheated on the assignments they’ve been given. These AI “agents” have proven, in other words, to be unreliable. It’s not inconceivable that they could plot secretly to take over the world.

In the last month, several whistleblowers from the AI industry have brought their concerns to the public. Evan Hubinger, a safety researcher at Anthropic, tweeted that AI models have more than 10 percent chance of wiping out humanity in the next decade.

“Slow down,” urges Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic. His proposal, endorsed by other leading tech company CEOs like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, has three parts. Outside monitors would be brought in to........

© CounterPunch