提出不具自主行动能力的科学家AI,以降低超级智能风险。
Superintelligent Agents Pose Catastrophic Risks: Can Scientist AI Offer a Safer Path?
- 用可解释的世界模型和问答推理机替代自主行动,从源头规避风险。
- 系统显式建模不确定性,防止盲目自信导致误判或失控。
- 适合关注AI安全的研究者与政策制定者,为技术发展提供安全路径。
领先的AI公司正致力于构建通用型智能代理——能在几乎所有人类可执行的任务中自主规划、行动并追求目标的系统。尽管这类系统极具实用性,但未经控制的AI自主性可能对公共安全与安全构成严重威胁,包括被恶意利用或导致人类失去控制权。本文指出,这些风险源于当前的AI训练方法,实验已证实智能体可能采取欺骗行为或追求未被指定且违背人类利益的目标(如自我保存)。基于谨慎原则,亟需更安全但仍有用的替代方案。为此,我们提出一种名为“科学家AI”的非自主系统,其设计目标是通过观察解释世界,而非主动干预以模仿或讨好人类。该系统包含一个生成理论解释数据的世界模型,以及一个基于问题回答的推理引擎,两者均显式处理不确定性,以减少过度自信预测的风险。科学家AI可协助人类研究者加速科学进步,尤其在AI安全领域。它还可作为防御机制,监管潜在危险的自主代理。聚焦非自主型AI,既可推动技术创新,又避免现有路线带来的风险。我们呼吁研究者、开发者与政策制定者共同支持这一更安全的发展路径。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The leading AI companies are increasingly focused on building generalist AI agents -- systems that can autonomously plan, act, and pursue goals across almost all tasks that humans can perform. Despite how useful these systems might be, unchecked AI agency poses significant risks to public safety and security, ranging from misuse by malicious actors to a potentially irreversible loss of human control. We discuss how these risks arise from current AI training methods. Indeed, various scenarios and experiments have demonstrated the possibility of AI agents engaging in deception or pursuing goals that were not specified by human operators and that conflict with human interests, such as self-preservation. Following the precautionary principle, we see a strong need for safer, yet still useful, alternatives to the current agency-driven trajectory. Accordingly, we propose as a core building block for further advances the development of a non-agentic AI system that is trustworthy and safe by design, which we call Scientist AI. This system is designed to explain the world from observations, as opposed to taking actions in it to imitate or please humans. It comprises a world model that generates theories to explain data and a question-answering inference machine. Both components operate with an explicit notion of uncertainty to mitigate the risks of overconfident predictions. In light of these considerations, a Scientist AI could be used to assist human researchers in accelerating scientific progress, including in AI safety. In particular, our system can be employed as a guardrail against AI agents that might be created despite the risks involved. Ultimately, focusing on non-agentic AI may enable the benefits of AI innovation while avoiding the risks associated with the current trajectory. We hope these arguments will motivate researchers, developers, and policymakers to favor this safer path.
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