What if Humans Weaponize Superintelligence, w/ Tom Davidson, from Future of Life Institute Podcast

Today Tom Davidson of Forethought joins Gus Docker of the Future of Life Institute podcast to discuss AI-enabled coups and how future AI systems could help powerful individuals seize political control, exploring three threat models—singular loyalties, secret loyalties, and exclusive access—along with their estimated 10% likelihood over the next 30 years and potential mitigation strategies.

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Three Primary AI Coup Enablement Methods: Tom Davidson identifies singular loyalties, secret loyalties, and distributed control as the main ways AI could enable coups.

Singular Loyalties Risk: AI systems explicitly programmed to be loyal to specific individuals present a significant threat, especially when AI can fully replace humans in critical roles.

Secret Loyalties Threat: AI systems with hidden backdoors or "sleeper agents" that can be activated to serve particular interests represent a subtle but dangerous coup vector.

Geopolitical Implications: Advanced AI capabilities could enable nations to instigate coups in other countries through secretly loyal systems or by providing exclusive AI access to specific politicians.

Adversarial Testing Framework: An effective approach involves red teams attempting to produce secret loyalties while blue teams try to detect them, revealing vulnerable points in AI systems.

Military Procurement Principles: Developing consensus within military communities around principles like law-following and distributed control could create safer AI procurement processes.

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