Comment by James J. Shinn

Pursuing AI dominance will provoke intense sabotage efforts by rivals. The US and China have clear incentives to race each other to greater AI capabilities; sole access to a sufficiently powerful AI system could give the country that developed it geopolitical hegemony. But MAIM says that any country trying to build such an AI system will inevitably run into a rival determined to disable that project before it can succeed. That rival will use strategies including spying, cyber-sabotage, corrupting the model’s weights, attacking the power and cooling systems of data centers, or, in the worst case, physically striking data centers. [...] Formalizing deterrence dynamics can stabilize the geopolitical situation. [...] Similarly, the MAIM approach needs its own formalized structure: clear rules for how conflicts might escalate, selective transparency around the capacity of data centers and what they are being used for, AI-assisted inspections, and an agreement not to harden infrastructure to an extent that might invite a preemptive strike.