Executive summary: The author argues that even if AI alignment turns out to be relatively easy—comparable to building a steam engine—we are still likely to go extinct due to failures of generalization, incentives, or governance that prevent alignment techniques from being applied correctly at the decisive moment.
Key points:
The author disputes the view that “trivial” alignment difficulty implies safety, arguing that high stakes and one-shot failure mean even small mistakes can be fatal.
Using a steam engine analogy, the author claims that early developers often miss critical components, and that analogous “missing brakes” in AI alignment could kill everyone rather than just breaking the system.
One failure mode described is that alignment techniques work on pre-ASI systems but fail to generalize to superintelligence, which may successfully evade evaluations and escape containment.
Another failure mode is competitive or malicious rushing, where developers deploy ASI before completing even relatively easy alignment work.
The author expresses concern about alignment bootstrapping, noting that it relies on untested methods, is hard to evaluate, and carries extinction-level downside if it fails.
The author concludes that unless alignment both is easy and generalizes to superintelligence, extinction risk remains high, and current levels of seriousness from AI developers make failure likely.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, andcontact us if you have feedback.
Executive summary: The author argues that even if AI alignment turns out to be relatively easy—comparable to building a steam engine—we are still likely to go extinct due to failures of generalization, incentives, or governance that prevent alignment techniques from being applied correctly at the decisive moment.
Key points:
The author disputes the view that “trivial” alignment difficulty implies safety, arguing that high stakes and one-shot failure mean even small mistakes can be fatal.
Using a steam engine analogy, the author claims that early developers often miss critical components, and that analogous “missing brakes” in AI alignment could kill everyone rather than just breaking the system.
One failure mode described is that alignment techniques work on pre-ASI systems but fail to generalize to superintelligence, which may successfully evade evaluations and escape containment.
Another failure mode is competitive or malicious rushing, where developers deploy ASI before completing even relatively easy alignment work.
The author expresses concern about alignment bootstrapping, noting that it relies on untested methods, is hard to evaluate, and carries extinction-level downside if it fails.
The author concludes that unless alignment both is easy and generalizes to superintelligence, extinction risk remains high, and current levels of seriousness from AI developers make failure likely.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.