to see actors who invest less in alignment, and who take more risks, to scale up the capabilities of
their systems faster. This could result in the competitive dynamics discussed above (e.g., other actors
cut back on safety efforts to keep up, and/or deploy systems that wouldn’t meet their own safety
standards, but which are safer than the ones they expect competitors to deploy); but if other actors
don’t cut back on safety as a result, the most powerful systems might end up increasingly in the hands
of the least cautious and socially responsible actors (though there are also important correlations
between social responsibility and factors like resource-access, talent, etc).
That said, as above, similar abstract dynamics plausibly apply in many industries, and it’s an empirical
question, dependent on a wide variety of factors, what sorts of safety problems actually result. AI is
no different.
Is Power-Seeking AI an Existential Risk?