Hypothetical situation: A for-profit company in the US develops AGI that may cause human extinction. The people involved know that that is what they are doing, but they do not have any intention to cause harm. They do not tell anyone outside the company about this effort.
Is there any US federal law that was violated here?
Note that this isn’t actually a hypothetical situation, and the answer to the question is of practical significance given anti AI protestors are currently facing jail for trying to (non-violently) stop OpenAI.
Note that the protestors say [1]that they are going to use the “necessity defence” here.
Well worth watching this documentary by award winning journalist John Sherman
@jason-1 would be interesting to hear your take on the OP.
EDIT: not sure why the tag isn’t working—getting Jason’s username from the URL on his profile page.
I feel like it should be, under reckless endangerment, or similar; even anti -terror laws under “acts dangerous to human life”. But what is the threshold for judging an activity to be risky or dangerous to human life? How much general and expert consensus does there need to be? (I am not a lawyer.)
My understanding is that the term “domestic terrorism” as defined in the linked page can only apply to activities that:
This does not apply to the activity in the hypothetical situation that I’m considering here.
(I am not a lawyer.)
“to influence the policy of a government by intimidation” might fit, given that they may well end up more powerful than governments if they succeed in their mission to build AGI (and they already have a lot of money, power and influence).