MIT AI Risk Repository · Risk Sub-Category · 55.02.03
AI-induced strategic instability
Category: Worsened conflict
Description
"For example, AI could undermine nuclear strategic stability by making it easier to discover and destroy previously secure nuclear launch facilities [30, 46, 49]. AI may also offer more extreme first-strike advantages or novel destructive capabilities that could disrupt deterrence, such as cyber capabilities being used to knock out opponents’ nuclear command and control [15, 29]. The use of AI capabilities may make it less clear where attacks originate from, making it easier for aggressors to obfuscate an attack, and therefore reducing the costs of initiating one. By making it more difficult t
From A Survey of the Potential Long-term Impacts of AI: How AI Could Lead to Long-term Changes in Science, Cooperation, Power, Epistemics and Values (Clarke2023), as extracted by the MIT AI Risk Repository (CC BY 4.0).
Classification
- Causal entity
- AI
- Intent
- Unintentional
- Timing
- Post-deployment
Subdomain definition: Humans delegating key decisions to AI systems, or AI systems making decisions that diminish human control and autonomy, potentially leading to humans feeling disempowered, losing the ability to shape a fulfilling life trajectory or becoming cognitively enfeebled.
Real-world incidents in this subdomain
- DisMech AI Curation Agent Reportedly Completed GitHub Issue Intended as New Contributor's Learning Task
- Waymo Driverless Taxi Allegedly Stalled During Pedestrian Harassment Incident in San Francisco
- California Police Turned on Music to Allegedly Trigger Instagram’s DCMA to Avoid Being Live-Streamed
- Hawaii Police Deployed Robot Dog to Patrol a Homeless Encampment
How other frameworks describe this risk
Other entries from Clarke2023
- Risks from accelerating scientific progress
- Eased development of technologies that make a global catastrophe more likely
- Eased development of technologies that make a global catastrophe more likely
- Faster scientific progress makes it harder for governance to keep pace with development
- Faster scientific progress makes it harder for governance to keep pace with development
- Worsened conflict
- AI enables development of weapons of mass destruction
- AI enables automation of military decision-making
- Resource conflicts driven by AI development
- Increased power concentration and inequality
- Unequal distribution of harms and benefits
- AI-based automation increases income inequality