The Manhattan Trap: Why a Race to Artificial Superintelligence is Self-Defeating
Below is the executive summary of our new paper, The Manhattan Trap. Please visit the link above to see the full paper. We also encourage discussion and feedback in the comments here. This paper examines the strategic dynamics of international competition to develop Artificial Superintelligence (ASI). We argue that the same assumptions that might motivate the US to race to develop ASI also imply that such a race is extremely dangerous. A race to develop ASI is motivated by two assumptions: that ASI provides a decisive military advantage (DMA) to the first state that develops it, and that states are rational actors aware of ASI's strategic implications. However, these same assumptions make racing catastrophically dangerous for three reasons. First, an ASI race creates a threat to strategic stability that could trigger a war between the US and its adversaries, particularly China. If ASI could provide a decisive military advantage, states would rationally view their adversaries' ASI development as an existential threat justifying military intervention and espionage. A state cannot race to ASI without incurring significant risk of great power conflict unless either (a) its adversaries are unaware of ASI's importance (contradicting the awareness assumption), (b) development can be kept secret (likely impossible given the scale required), or (c) adversaries believe they can win the race (requiring a close competition in which victory is not assured). Second, racing heightens the risk of losing control of an ASI system once developed. We do not take a position on the likelihood of loss of control. Instead, we observe that the argument for racing assumes that ASI would wield a decisive advantage over the militaries of global superpowers; accordingly, losing control of such a technology would also present an existential threat to the state that developed it. We also argue that an ASI would only provide a DMA if its capabilities scaled extremely rapidly—precisely the sce
