Don’t let AI build the next AI

Given the dangers that self-improving AI could pose, the United States should implement a simple rule: No U.S. AI lab should be permitted to fully automate its research and development pipeline.

“Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.”

Those words were uttered by Irving John Good in 1966 in describing the machine that would kick off recursive self-improvement (RSI) in artificial intelligence research and development.

Good argued that designing intelligent machines is itself an intellectual activity, making self-development possible. An AI model could produce a more capable successor, which, in turn, becomes even more effective and faster at producing itself. Today’s AI researchers frequently talk about an “intelligence explosion” that would result from exactly this process.

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