Comment by insane_dreamer
2 years ago
If someone really wanted to use nukes, they would have been used by now. What has protected us is not technology (in the aftermath of the USSR it wasn't that difficult to steal a nuke), but rather lack of incentives. A bad actor doesn't have much to gain by detonating a nuke (unless they're deranged and want to see people die for the pleasure of it). OK, you could use it as blackmail, which North Korea essentially tried, but that only got them so far. Whereas a super AI could potentially be used for great personal gain, i.e., to gain extreme wealth and power.
So there's much greater chance of misuse of a "Super AI" than nuclear weapons.
Sure, that just makes the military incentives to develop such a thing even stronger. All I mean is that business incentives don't really come into it, as long as there is competition, someone's going to want to build weapons to gain advantage, whether it's a business or a government.