The Risks of Preventive Attack in the Race for Advanced Artificial Intelligence

Will the race for advanced artificial intelligence (AI) make war more likely? If technology futurists are right that the advent of artificial general intelligence (AGI) will radically alter the global balance of power, could AGI development tempt states to resort to war to secure those advantages for themselves or to deny them to their rivals? In this working paper, we develop a framework of variables that shape preventive war risks and consider how these variables apply to AGI development. By AGI, we mean advanced artificial intelligence that can match or exceed human performance across a broad spectrum of tasks. This working paper evaluates AGI’s implications from a political rather than a technical perspective. That is, if rapid technological progress toward AGI continues, what are the political implications for international stability? Drawing from three scenarios for how preventive pressures could potentially manifest as preventive wars, the analysis suggests that the probability of war is low in absolute terms. But preventive war appears relatively more likely to occur in an attempt to preserve a monopoly on AGI than to prevent one.