🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses the strategic risks posed by unilateral U.S. advancement in artificial intelligence, which may be perceived by adversaries as an existential threat, potentially triggering preemptive and destabilizing responses that jeopardize national security. Drawing on the theory of credible commitments from international relations, the paper proposes a framework for establishing multilayered mechanisms of credible restraint through coordinated policy and technical measures. These mechanisms aim to enhance the credibility of commitments under conditions of high uncertainty. The analysis demonstrates that, compared to pursuing unilateral advantage, a strategy of credible restraint more effectively mitigates adversaries’ misperceptions regarding both capabilities and intentions, thereby improving strategic stability. This approach offers a novel pathway for international security governance in the AI era.
📝 Abstract
Some have claimed that the future development of powerful AI systems would enable the United States to shift the international balance of power dramatically in its favor. Such a feat may not be technically possible; even so, if American AI development is perceived as a sufficiently severe threat by its nation-state adversaries, then the risk that they take extreme preventive action against the United States may rise. To bolster its security against preventive action, the United States could aim to pursue a strategy of restraint by demonstrating that it would not use powerful AI to threaten the survival of other nations. Drawing from the international relations literature that explores how states can make credible commitments, we sketch a set of options that the United States could employ to implement this strategy. In the most challenging setting, where it is certain that the US will unilaterally obtain powerful new capabilities, it is difficult to credibly commit to restraint, though an approach that layers significant policy effort with technical breakthroughs may make credibility achievable. If an adversary has realistic levels of uncertainty about the capabilities and intentions of the United States, a strategy of restraint becomes more feasible. Though restraint faces difficulties, it deserves to be weighed against alternative strategies that have been proposed for avoiding conflict during the transition to a world with advanced AI.