Nascent capabilities (emergent capabilities)

Description

Example: "Autonomous replication and adaptation (ARA): Another behavior being studied, though not yet confirmed, is the possibility of self-replication. If models evolve to autonomous coding,451 they might self-improve and replicate. For instance, one may wonder whether a model may have the ability to “exfiltrate itself,”452 i.e., to “steal” its own weights and copy it to some external server that the model owner does not control."

From Regulating under Uncertainty: Governance Options for Generative AI (G'sell2024), as extracted by the MIT AI Risk Repository (CC BY 4.0).