MIT AI Risk Repository · Risk Sub-Category · 34.03.01
Power-Seeking Behaviors
Category: Misaligned Behaviors
Description
"AI systems may exhibit behaviors that attempt to gain control over resourcesand humans and then exert that control to achieve its assigned goal (Carlsmith, 2022). The intuitive reasonwhy such behaviors may occur is the observation that for almost any optimization objective (e.g., investmentreturns), the optimal policy to maximize that quantity would involve power-seeking behaviors (e.g.,manipulating the market), assuming the absence of solid safety and morality constraints."
From AI Alignment: A Comprehensive Survey (Ji2023), as extracted by the MIT AI Risk Repository (CC BY 4.0).
Classification
- Causal entity
- AI
- Intent
- Intentional
- Timing
- Other
Subdomain definition: AI systems acting in conflict with human goals or values, especially the goals of designers or users, or ethical standards. These misaligned behaviors may be introduced by humans during design and development, such as through reward hacking and goal misgeneralisation, or may result from AI using dangerous capabilities such as manipulation, deception, situational awareness to seek power, self-proliferate, or achieve other goals.
Real-world incidents in this subdomain
- Reinforcement Learning Reward Functions in Video Games
- Predictive Policing Program by Florida Sheriff’s Office Allegedly Violated Residents’ Rights and Targeted Children of Vulnerable Groups
- Image Classification of Battle Tanks
How other frameworks describe this risk
- Natural Language Underspecifies Goals
- Loss of control
- Loss of control
- Sudden loss of control
- AI leads to humans losing control of the future
- Risks from delegating decision-making power to misaligned AIs
- Risks from AIs developing goals and values that are different from humans
- Future AI systems might actively reduce human control