Executive Summary

This post interrogates the shift that is happening in particular to nuclear deterrence as AI nears an exponential rate of acceleration and the interesting shifts in incentives this creates for governments and non-state actors (for example AI companies). Foremost the race for AI development increases the incentive for a first strike to take out a competitor's AI infrastructure. These shifts are manifesting in policy (or lack thereof) and significant investment into nuclear and space capabilities. We argue that current deterrent frameworks being discussed by policy makers, such as Mutually Assured AI Malfunction (MAIM) are unrealistic. We propose an operational security based approach to deterrence (akin to modern cybersecurity practices) making systems more expensive to “take out”, with a strong focus on geographic and even interplanetary distribution to key civilizational infrastructure. Mutual AI Redundant Safeguards or MARS.

Background

This post focuses less on the technical capabilities of AI (my day job is building advanced nuclear breeder reactors, not neural networks) and simply assumes that AI will have a direct, positive impact on a given economy. We can say that AI will define and drive “key civilizational infrastructure”, ambiguous of the actual technology behind it. We want to argue that the greatest short term risk for civilization is not the fact of superintelligence, but the assumption that the risk of being second in the race for superintelligence, incentivizes pre-emptive strikes. We argue that this key assumption is incentivizing nations to make missive build outs in energy and AI capabilities.

As a final note and bias: my current focus is building mass producible nuclear reactors, ensuring that AI systems that go online are carbon neutral (or negative) and can provide power for “highly distributed” habitation and power systems.

The Race for Superintelligence

Defining the current geopolitical shift is the idea that whoever is second in this race for superintelligence, will never be able to catch up. Even if your competitor is just a few weeks ahead of you, growth curves advance so rapidly that your own civilization (often defined as western vs Chinese civilization) will become obsolete. Your competitor will be so good at writing code and shipping key civilizational technologies, that you will ne...

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