Felix Choussat

This article discusses the "Proliferation by Default" dynamic that the falling price of weapons-capable AI systems will create. It covers an array of dangerous capabilities in future systems and comparisons to historical technologies. In the following parts of this series, we will explore the how the price of these offensive AI systems could fall, their strategic implications, and policy solutions. Summary of key points: 1. There are a number of technologies where even human-level assistance could allow non-state actors to acquire WMDs, especially in the development of bio, chemical, and cyber weapons. 2. Narrowly superhuman AI technologies (such as those specialized in biological or robotics engineering) could contribute to the development of cheap superweapons, such as mirror life and autonomous drone swarms. 3. Generally superintelligent AIs would be overwhelmingly strategically impactful, given their major advantages in intelligence, speed, coordination, and scalability compared to humans. 4. Through their strategic superiority, these superintelligent AIs would allow whoever commanded them to gain a dominant strategic advantage over other non-ASI actors. If they cannot be controlled, ASI competition with humanity for resources and agency could lead to either permanent human disempowerment or extinction. 5. Given these strategic realities, proliferation of powerful AI systems is a major national and international security risk, even for non-superintelligent models. Powerful AI Systems and Weapons For just under a century, world-ending technology has been constrained to nukes and bioweapons, although its easier to credit this to the fact that we haven't yet discovered dangerous new technologies rather than that we chose to avoid building them. Fortunately, both of these weapons have large technical, financial, and logistical barriers, which, when combined with our current nonproliferation efforts, have kept them