Is AI an Existential Risk? Q&A with RAND Experts

At a recent RAND event, a panel of five experts tackled emerging questions about the potential risks associated with artificial intelligence; whether such risks might be catastrophic or even existential; and how humanity can address them.

To kick off the conversation, our researchers revealed what they view as the biggest risks posed by AI:

• “The risk I'm concerned about isn't a sudden, immediate event,” said Benjamin Boudreaux. “It's a set of incremental harms that worsen over time. Like climate change, AI might be a slow-moving catastrophe, one that diminishes the institutions and agency we need to live meaningful lives.”
• Jonathan Welburn is focused on how AI may further exacerbate inequity and inequality. “That's where the potential worst-case scenario is for me. Capital owners own all the newest technology … all the wealth, and all the decisionmaking.” But Welburn stressed that he sees humanity eventually transitioning through the “technological shock” of AI.
• “One of the risks that keeps me up at night is the resurrection of smallpox,” said Jeff Alstott. “Bioweapons happens to be one example where, historically, the barriers [to bad actors] have been information and knowledge. You don't need much in the way of specialized matériel or expensive sets of equipment any longer in order to achieve devastating effects, with the launching of pandemics. AI could close the knowledge gap.”
• Nidhi Kalra said that she’s less worried about the risk of AI than she is about other challenges, such as climate change, the risk of nuclear war, and rising income inequality. One concern she does have: “What does the world look like when we, even more than is already the case today, can't distinguish fact from fiction?”
• “AI threatens to be an amplifier for human stupidity,” said Edward Geist. “For instance, the idea of machines that do what you ask for—rather than what you wanted or should have asked for—or machines that make the same kind of mistakes that humans make, only faster and in larger quantities.”

The panel also discussed what AI policies reasonable people might agree on (even if they disagree about whether AI poses an existential risk), the role of research as humanity moves into a new era, and how RAND can contribute.