Fundamental Risk

By Ihor Ivliev @ 2025-06-26T00:25 (+1)

The fundamental risk of AI does not stem from malice, but from the physics of unconstrained optimization.

Our governance and verification capabilities are scaling linearly, while the optimization power we are unleashing scales exponentially. This is a structural mismatch, and we are on the wrong side of it. The danger is not a gentle slope but a sudden phase transition - a point of no return after which control could be permanently lost. We cannot assume we will see it coming.

This isn't speculation - it is the logical consequence of well-established theorems in computation and control theory showing that perfect, verifiable safety is a formal impossibility.

This doesn’t mean we are helpless - but it does mean we are out of free margin. Every month of unconstrained capability racing widens the gap between what an optimizer can do and what our oversight can prove safe. 

A sober reading of the science requires immediate, pragmatic action:

1. Treat safety like stewardship: Fund red-teaming, open telemetry standards, and "crash-cart" shutdown protocols with the same urgency we fund capability scaling.

2. Build institutional resilience now: Implement governance drills to reduce decision latency and mitigate institutional bias before they are stress-tested by a real crisis.

3. Incentivize bounded progress: Tie access to frontier compute to independent safety audits, not just capability metrics.

We won’t get infinite shots at this. Prudent, rigorous action today is the most pro-innovation stance we can take, as it buys us the time to keep future options open.

This is not a false alarm. This is not a drill. This is an alert and a call to action - for the maximal acceleration of preparation, training, and proactive defense. Take it with deadly seriousness before it’s too late.

God help us all

The Multi-dimensional Exploration of the Inescapable Risk Posed by Advanced Optimizers: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29183669.v11