In a policy paper published on Wednesday, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned that the US should not push for a Manhattan-style project for AI systems development.
The paper “Superintelligence Strategy” mentioned that aggressively bidding to gain control of superintelligent AI systems could result in retaliation from countries like China. Such retaliation could be in the form of cyberattacks, directly impacting international relations.
The policy paper was co-authored by Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, and Director of the Center for AI Safety, Dan Hendricks. The co-authors wrote, “[A] Manhattan Project [for AGI] assumes that rivals will acquiesce to an enduring imbalance or omnicide rather than move to prevent it.”
The authors further added, “What begins as a push for a superweapon and global control risks prompting hostile countermeasures and escalating tensions, thereby undermining the very stability the strategy purports to secure.”
This paper came just a few months after the US Congressional Commission proposed a “Manhattan project-style” funding scheme to develop Artificial general intelligence. The project is modeled after the US efforts to develop the atomic bomb in the 1940s.
Christ Wright, the US Secretary of Energy, mentioned that the US is about to begin a “new Manhattan Project” on Artificial intelligence. He said, “With President Trump’s leadership, the United States will win the global AI race, but first, we must unleash our energy dominance and restore American competitiveness.”
Several American industry leaders and policymakers have suggested that pursuing a government-backed program for the development of AI is the best way to compete with countries like China. However, the Superintelligence Strategy paper challenges this idea.
Eric Schmidt refers to it as mutually assured destruction
The author argued that, just like global powers avoid monopolies over nuclear weapons (because they can trigger retaliation in the form of preventive sabotage), the US should be careful about trying to dominate with powerful AI systems.
Eric Schmidt talked about a concept called MAIM (mutual assured AI malfunction). It refers to governments of other countries actively trying to disable AI-based threats instead of waiting for AGI to get weaponized against them.
The authors argued that instead of focusing on “winning the race to superintelligence,” the US should develop methods to deter others from creating such systems. They also added that the US should “expand [its] arsenal of cyberattacks to disable threatening AI projects.”
However, the Trump administration seems adamant about pushing the US forward in the AI race. Schmidt, however, argues that it is wise to consider a defensive approach as the world watches the US pushing AI to its limits.
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