Should AI Progress Be Slowed Down?

A confluence of forces from pending trillion dollar IPO’s, recent jailbreak agentic AI announcements, ongoing data center fears, and rising tension in geopolitics have created quite a conundrum for AI companies in the West.  Calls by Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, for an industry wide slowing of AI research are in direct conflict with the AI race with China, stoking national security fears.  David Sacks, the former White House AI Czar, called out this Doomerism, and pointed out that "Tech leaders should "step aside" if they cannot control the artificial intelligence systems they are building."

The Bottom Line: Understand Five Common Sense AI Policies

1. Use the kill switch requirement.  Kill switches stop AI from making decisions, taking actions, and automating decisions.  The kill switch should isolate the system and cut the AI off from other systems, the outside world, and data.  Security access should be revoked and security tokens and API keys should be blocked.  These safeguards should operate independent of the AI's own reasoning software, operate in physical and digital forms, and should not be overridden by AI. The recently introduced US Ai Kill Switch Act, if enacted, would provide a significant foundation for AI safety.
    
2. Apply Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics to AI.  The famous American writer and professor of biochemistry, Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) wrote and edited over 500 books. In the Foundation series, he introduced the Three Laws of Robotics which well apply to AI.  The First Law - Robots cannot harm humans or allow them to come ot harm through inaction; The Second Law - Robots must obey human orders, unless they conflict with the First Law; Third Law - Robots must protect themselves, provided it does not conflict with the First or Second Law; and the Zeroth Law - a robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
    
3. Ensure security by design. This approach to technology development builds security controls from the ground up rather than adding them post production.  Using least privilege - gives users and agents the minimum access needed; defense in depth - applies multiple layers of security controls; fail securely - allow systems to revert to a safe state when errors or failures occur instead of opening up access; and secure defaults - where products are shipped safe out of the box with no additional costs.
    
4. Commit to energy ratepayer protection and (water).  The Ratepayer Protection Act (H.R. 9340) and the related Ratepayer Protection Pledge stops large load data centers from driving up rates to consumers by consuming energy supplies and passing on infrastructure costs.  In fact, the act also allows AI companies to build their own electrical generation capacity.  Similar requirements on water consumption will probably follow.
    
5. Submit to national security review.  A combination of mandatory and voluntary review frameworks by different agencies should be in place to address national security, cybersecurity, consumer protection, and critical infrastructure risks. 

Your POV

Which policies have you considered?  What have we missed in common sense AI policies?

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