Reed’s view
The AI Futures Project last year issued a gloomy prediction of what will happen if AI progress continues unchecked: Humanity doesn’t make it.
This year, the research group headed by former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo is going one step further. In AI 2040: Plan A, the group is advocating for the US and China to cooperate on a temporary pause of frontier AI research so the industry can build some scaffolding around safe development.
“We’re not exactly de-growthers,” Kokotajlo told Semafor. “But if you want to actually benefit from that growth and abundance, you need to avoid the risks involved.”
The idea has already drawn criticism from AI accelerationists who dismiss the “doomer” notion that superintelligent AI will inevitably destroy humanity.
But if you read the report — and it is not light reading — “Plan A” is far from anti-AI propaganda. In fact, there is more than enough acceleration of AI to create unprecedented economic growth. It dispenses with the idea that AI replacing human labor will lead to economic ruin.
But even if frontier AI development stopped today, current capabilities are enough to spur a years-long wave of innovation and economic growth. It just takes more data-center capacity and infrastructure for the benefits to fully materialize. “Plan A” pauses development for a couple of years, and has some pretty far-out ways of ensuring China and other countries don’t cheat to get ahead.
The plan also reads a bit like a fairy tale in which world leadership suddenly comes together, setting aside politics, personal interest, and greed for the sake of humanity. It seems even more pie-in-the-sky when you consider brave global leadership is scarcer than GPUs and high-bandwidth memory.
So far, the AI safety movement has used fear as a motivator. That’s clear in last year’s report, which made waves across tech and politics circles around the world.
But after reading this year’s report, I wonder if a more optimistic message about the promise of AI and economic prosperity might be a better sales pitch, or at least lead to better outcomes.
I posed the question to Kokotajlo, who said the goal was careful analysis, rather than persuasion: “Probably we’ll tick off a lot of people due to clumsy framing,” he said. “Hopefully, more savvy people can take inspiration from us and craft a plan that is really compelling and inspiring.”
In other words, AI safety is not standing in the way of AI development and rapid economic growth. They can be the same thing.
Notable
- China’s top diplomat last month told reporters Beijing is “accelerating the establishment of a global AI cooperation organization,” CNBC reported.
- OpenAI has had some open disagreements with the White House on AI safety rules, Politico reported last month.