Will international AI alignment cooperation trump the rights of weaker countries?
TLDR—Real cooperation on International AI regulation may only be possible through a much more peaceful but unsentimental foreign policy
In 1987 President Reagan said to the United Nations “how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.” Isn’t an unaligned Artificial General Intelligence that alien threat? And it’s easy—and perhaps overly obvious and comforting—to say that humanity would unite, but now we have this threat what would that unity look like?
Here’s one not necessarily comforting thought, the weak (nations) will get trampled further by the strong (nations). If cooperation rather than competition among power is vital then wouldn’t we need to prioritise keeping powerful and potentially powerful countries—at least in AI terms—over other ideological concerns. To see what this looks like let’s look at some of those powerful countries:
China—the obvious one, would we need to annoy the national security hawks over Taiwan, but also decent, humane liberals over Tibet and Sichuan?
Russia—Ukraine would annoy just about everybody
Israel—Well this happens already because of domestic considerations, but it might reverse domestic political calculations on:
UK—the British are a big player in AI (and seemingly more important than the EU) so would needling them about Northern Ireland really be worth ticking off the one reliable ally the US has with clout?
This is before looking at the role of countries that may be important in relation to AI and who the US wouldn’t want going rogue on regulation but who neighbour China—such as Japan, South Korea and the chip superpower Taiwan.
Will international AI alignment cooperation trump the rights of weaker countries?
TLDR—Real cooperation on International AI regulation may only be possible through a much more peaceful but unsentimental foreign policy
In 1987 President Reagan said to the United Nations “how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.” Isn’t an unaligned Artificial General Intelligence that alien threat? And it’s easy—and perhaps overly obvious and comforting—to say that humanity would unite, but now we have this threat what would that unity look like?
Here’s one not necessarily comforting thought, the weak (nations) will get trampled further by the strong (nations). If cooperation rather than competition among power is vital then wouldn’t we need to prioritise keeping powerful and potentially powerful countries—at least in AI terms—over other ideological concerns. To see what this looks like let’s look at some of those powerful countries:
China—the obvious one, would we need to annoy the national security hawks over Taiwan, but also decent, humane liberals over Tibet and Sichuan?
Russia—Ukraine would annoy just about everybody
Israel—Well this happens already because of domestic considerations, but it might reverse domestic political calculations on:
UK—the British are a big player in AI (and seemingly more important than the EU) so would needling them about Northern Ireland really be worth ticking off the one reliable ally the US has with clout?
This is before looking at the role of countries that may be important in relation to AI and who the US wouldn’t want going rogue on regulation but who neighbour China—such as Japan, South Korea and the chip superpower Taiwan.