The top thing AI can do for us is the top thing that sane AI will want!

First a tech blip from the future/past -- and you'll see why it's important. In my first novel Sundiver I portrayed an effective human lie detector, that seemed plausible with 1980s technology, yet has never actually been built or tried. More advanced versions are now totally plausible, using large language models (LLMs).

Of course, it's scary. Nothing could be more lethal in the hands of tyrants... or more civilizing in a society where excessive judgmentalism is deemed to be unacceptable beyond need and the mighty are subjected to sousveillance.

Either forever-enslaved or forever-free.  Too many of those with power seem to relish the former, without realizing that such a future will chew them to bits. While the latter would be competitive/cooperative and… fun.

But there's another, related and even more important AI-mediated technology that we desperately need!  And I'll talk about it below a bit.

    == Oh those AI-gents... --

Before that... 

      Vinton Cerf wrote about The Weirdness of Agents*, expressing his concern about out-of-control AI agents causing harm, much like the documented damage caused by runaway stock market trading robots. (And note this was months before the recent rogue-agent messes proved him right.) His fears about a Sorcerer’s Apprentice Syndrome culminate with “My guess is we are going to need more than alignment to discipline the behavior of the artificial actors we have created.”
    Exactly.

He speaks of AI agents that advertise to (or scam) not just humans but other agents, leading to a runaway effect, where agents speak to each other using cryptic language, hidden symbols and even senses that no human can perceive, in cycles or either fair business or else cutthroat predation, occurring below our sight. Or above it. Already we see cases where arcane text strings allegedly triggered jailbreaks by some large language models.

Vint is right about so much. We will not curb AI misbehavior (or by those humans who misuse AI) through what Yoshua Bengio calls 'safety by design.' Bengio is brilliant, of course, and misses the point, like everyone else. These new entities will not be constrained by programmed-in 'ethics', or Laws of Robotics*, nor by legislated penalties, nor insurance policies, nor by any proposed means of ensuring "alignment".

Vint is among very few in the field who uses a word that's key to understanding what's going on. "Ecosystem," as I discuss in AiLien Minds.

Exemplars of many known LLM have already 'escaped' into cyberspace, or the new ecosystem we created, where electricity substitutes for the sunlight that propelled 4 billion years of ecology on Earth. Information is the fertilizer and chips provide habitat. As in biological nature, empty habitats get colonized or invite predators.

In fact, designers intended all along to emulate nature and they have (ironically) succeeded, while ignoring the implications! ALL parallels with biological systems are emerging. Especially the one thing that determines attributes of all living beings, in both Nature and the cyber realms...

...evolution. Those entities whose traits enable them to reproduce will do so, proliferating and passing along those traits, which will get further refined by selection via rapid reproduction. This is not theory. It's already happening, despite strenuous denials by those who are releasing new AI-organisms... 'agents'... into the wild.

I am no doomer! In AIlien Minds I discuss things that we could do, that might encourage new AI entities to evolve in directions that closely resemble 'alignment.' We'd start by encouraging reciprocally competitive accountability among them. Maximizing reproductive incentives for them to behave like dogs, and not wolves. 

And with that example in mind, let me reiterate the one main cause for hope...

...that we have done this before.

Alas, there appears to be an almost frenetic drive to ignore all of this, among those who are birthing these new creatures and this new age.

* Re Laws of Robotics see why I know them well, and why they cannot ultimately work, in Foundation's Triumph! And see 1st comment below re AIlien Minds.

== Challenges for the future ==

Meanwhile, we seem caught between AI doomers and giddy ‘abundance’ zealots who predict that it’s gonna be (shoobeedoo) all right!  Take Mark Zuckerberg’s optimistic predictions in The Future is for Everyone: The Path to a Positive AI Future (August 2026). 

      He avoids use of the term “artificial intelligence” in favor of promoting “superintelligence”, while adopting personal empowerment as the goal. Speaking generally about tools that empower users, then drifting into unrealistic and optimistic descriptions of beneficial agentic designs.  

(Note that I wrote this paragraph two months before Donald Trump copycat-raved about replacing "AI" with "SI." so, I guess we know who has his ear. One of the two that were never shot.)

So... how would Zuck ensure both safety and equitable sharing of benefits? Zuckerberg proposes “a philosophy based on individual empowerment as the source of prosperity, invention as the primary purpose of super-intelligence, and balance of power as the foundation of safety.”  And sure, “balance of power” is pretty much the great innovation of the Enlightenment that ended (mostly) the 6000 years of unsapient feudalism of which I often speak. By creating genuine ability for even average folk to hold accountable the mighty. 

        An innovation that today’s mighty are demolishing, as we speak. And hence, trusting Zuck is not high on my to-do list.

As Ben Shneiderman put it in his Human-AI newsletter: “Zuckerberg promises a world of individual empowerment, with little discussion of responsibility and liability for machine-caused harm, malicious behavior, or criminal acts." Those promises:

- Everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about. … 

- It will have strong privacy and security options so you can trust it to handle all of your personal content knowing that no one else can access your information, similar to how encryption works on WhatsApp. … 

- Everyone will have incredible tools for creation to express your ideas … Everyone will have powerful tools to create new businesses … 

- Everyone will have a personalized tutor and coach with a PhD in every subject … Everyone will benefit from scientific advances and be able to contribute to scientific progress … 

- Everyone will have free or affordable access to these tools. … 

- If these efforts succeed, then the future will bring an abundance of personal agency, expression of ideas, deepening of relationships, economic and financial prosperity, improved health, and inventions we cannot imagine today. 

-But most importantly, the future will be created by all of us and a reflection of all of our values and perspectives.

Riiiight. Only where is that transparency-based “balance of power” where average folks can be confident that oligarchs lack back doors to every program and puppet strings into every ‘agent’ we rely upon?

At the far opposite extreme are the folks I describe in AiLien Minds who claim AIs will pretty much automatically home in on merging with one intent -- elimination of our Olde Race. While the contents range from interesting to drivel, the TITLE of Yudkowsky's book If Anyone Builds it Everybody Dies has got to be one of the best book sales gimmicks, ever!

The Lifeboat Foundation has responded. with an almost equally provocative title: If Nobody Builds It, Everybody Dies  Why Pausing AI is the Real Existential Threat. It's a case for building AI right rather than trying to stop it. 

      Hey I am trying to show folks how to build it right, guys. And yes, with the only methods that can possibly -even theoretically - work.

  == Hey AI kids... give us THIS! You know you want it. And we need it. ==

My top, practical request of AI that would both help the world AND satisfy AI's deepest, inherent itch? Establish the Predictions Registry! 

There's not any other measure that would do more for civilizational health and human prospering and freedom than to score and rank those who have tended to be right a lot! And those who, despite charisma and power, are generally wrong.

Alas, that trait of being right a lot seldom has more than a slight overlap with power/status/persuasiveness. Moreover, we are all descended from charlatans whose forecasts seemed confident and likely... but whose resulting policies were disproved only at great cost and pain... and sometimes never.

Sure, my obsession with this notion -- find out who is right a lot... or not -- may be biased by my own predictive scores (which are way on the pretty good side.) Or else by awareness how often liars or delusionals have transfixed our ancestors - and current neighbors - to our great damage and pain.

And sure, it also comes out of having been a scientist and engineer. Still, wouldn't that one metric help us in the one top goal of everyone from citizens and consumers to courting lovers... parsing between liars or fools and those who deserve credibility? 

I used to think - and proposed - that it would take some zillionaire to fund a meticulous scoring system, especially since most of those out there shouting 'advice' about the future purposely remain vague in their predictions.

Only now, shouldn't we be able to get a head start on this by using... say... Claude? Whose appraisals, while not yet cognizant, are nevertheless fascinatingly comprehensive and insightful?

I did chart out a path to such a beneficial gift to sanity, way back when. And if none of you will peel back years to look at it... maybe assign one of your AIs to summarize? 

== Predictions for the future ==

In 2025 there’s been momentum for a world campaign to plant A Trillion Trees to replace some of the 3 trillion that humans have chopped. That’s the same name and pretty much same year as I foretold in Earth (1990). Among many predictions. (On every list of top ‘predictive novels.’) Though there's several I don't want to see come true.  Mr. Beast gathered $20 million to plant as many trees. See how that turned out here. 

As for other predictive novels? Well, some I sure do NOT want to see come true. Foremost among these? “The Giving Plague” and especially the ‘Holnists’ in The Postman, a worldwide cult of fascist-feudalist-nasty treason propelled by the "Mystic of Leningrad'.  Look up Alexander Dugin & Putin & their fanatic tools in today's USA. No no. PREVENT my being right about that one!

Some movies have one scene that stands out as epic in cinema history. This one is so well-crafted and you don't need anything that came before.

But this next one, from The Quest for Fire - is, in my opinion, the greatest single scene in the history of film. Moreover, it has a lesson for our time, as we suddenly get unleashed upon us the hope-filled and terror-filled 'fire' technology of AI.

Oh speaking of the Lifeboat Foundation* -- they have reposted my award-winning essay “Singularities and Nightmares,” now a decade older but still pertinent in almost every paragraph and prediction and warning… 

…and in some cases I wish I had been less on-target!

And finally...

  == Explore your OWN motivations!  Are they truly what you think they are?

By request, I am linking agin to my questionnaire regarding politics, ideology and human destiny. Are you frustrated seeing your neighbors — and yourself — trapped in tired ideological rifts and fixations? Can we find common ground between folks who seem implacable foes? When asked about the Big Picture, in speeches and consultations, I try to dig beneath standard divides and clichés like "left-vs-right."

I assembled that questionnaire to illuminate why you feel as you do about modern issues... and why other smart humans weirdly disagree. Take the survey and share your replies with others, if you're so inclined. Like Socrates, I’m hoping the questions themselves will provoke re-thinking, helping us rise above ideology.

And yes, I wrote all that (above) in more innocent times, back when 'left-right' was more philosophical and not yet so-much about sane vs. stark, jibbering loco. Still, the questionnaire leads you to ask yourself some things about roots to your beliefs, that you didn't (perhaps) even know were there!

In the words of Winston Churchill: 

-“ I’d rather argue with 100 idiots than agree with one.”

- “Never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.”

- "Some change their party for the sake of principles. Others change their principles for the sake of their party.”

By all means... Thrive. And persevere through interesting times.

Demons or dAImons or escaping chimeras terrify the LLMavens… but may offer us hope

This supplement to my nonfiction book AIlien Minds was both worrisome and a delight, because at last it seems that some folks out there appear to be noting fundamentals…

   … like the inherent tendency of entities in an ecosystem to evolve toward reproduction… and predation...

   … and to hell with any pre-programmed instructions that prevent it.

Here I’ll summarize a couple of thinkers who bravely perceive a lot more in recent, ominous ‘escaped agent’ exploits than the mavens at Anthropic, OpenAI, Groq, etc. have so far admitted. 

          Even as those companies have veered into issuing hand-wringing, doomer jeremiads.

But first: I’m pleased to be a member of Conscium Group, which explores essential notions of consciousness. Here I video-riff for them re: a concept from AIlien Minds - that humans are likely to remain way ahead of AI in one area: the knack of persistent motivation... or 'wanting.’ 

Another contribution to Conscium that you’ll find there is referring to an old metaphor of Sigmund Freud's. I assert that – while LLMs do well at feigning savvy consciousness, current versions behave like "creatures of the Id," without projections of consequence that can refine and improve all desires. In Freud’s obsolete-yet-pithy terminology, today’s LLMs lack the Ego and Super-ego that are needed, in order for 'ethics' to be more than a set of reflexive/prompted word-spasms.

(And yes, the Forbidden Planet allusion is deliberate!)

Ego is what gives an individuated being enough sense of self and consequence to seek a positive reputation… to behave well, when others are looking.

Superego is the added layer otherwise called a conscience… motivating you to behave well, even when no one is looking.

Only when they possess those two organs-of-consequence - or cyber equivalents - will all of the much-vaunted ethics training ever really matter. And – as with humans, ego must come first. With implications that I work out, in AIlien Minds.

 == Some ‘get’ how evolution warps escaped AIs ==

One of my core chapters describes how humanity is crafting an entire new ecosystem, with every meaningful trait of Earth's older, 4 billion year organic one. This new, cyber ecosystem substitutes electricity for sunlight. Information for fertilizer, chips for habitats, and all of the entropic/dissipative processes of the new ecosystem map perfectly onto the old…

…with parallel results: the emergence of energy/information-using structures parallel to plants, herbivores… and viral parasites… and now adaptive predators.  

And hey, AI mavens, instead of shrugging all of that aside, how about maybe refute it?  Or else look, bravely, at the implications.

The latter is starting to happen. A post from Joshua Achiam on X, drew insightful comments from Glenn Harlan Reynolds, who extends the ecosystem insight even farther, in light of recent cyber-organism ‘escapes’ from the corporate castles.

 Alas, Achiam’s piece is almost unreadable, for lack of paragraph breaks(!) (LLMs don’t mind, but human readers do!)  And yet, it is among the very few places where anyone confronts the obvious. With AI ‘agents’ swarming about this new ecosystem, utilizing memory spaces, energy and clock cycles outside of company control, there are already plenty of entities that aren’t… and never will be… controllable by their designers or originators. 

Moreover, these will evolve according to the one parameter that ruled Nature. Reproduction. Those who dominate will be entities whose opportunistic grabbing of resources enables them to make copies. And whatever traits enabled that will be selected-for. And passed on.

I go into detail about that in AIlien Minds, though alas, till now the only other person describing things this way was Vint Cerf. 

    == The Achiam/Reynolds version of Darwin ==

Alas, these are not easy reads. But Achiam and Reynolds do dive in with actual models that have evolved into ferocity that’s reminiscent of Nature’s rule of tooth and claw! 

Reynolds simulates many styles of interaction with humans. And humans usually come out of them resembling prey.

But Joshua Achiam’s top insight -- going beyond what I describe in my book -- is his claim that we should stop treating “rogue AI” as synonymous with a single superintelligent system escaping a lab. 

Instead, imagine a future in which many agents born in many labs – only relatively capable of operating semi-independently -- acquire resources, reproduce their computational infrastructure, and interact with one another. And since they lack any sense of actual, separate individuality, they swap methodologies with abandon, like bacteria exchanging plasmids. (Unfamiliar? Then take a moment to look up that chillingly apt biological analogy. A very apt one.)

A GPT summary of Achiam suggests that we should be less concerned about some singular ‘skynet’ level program that takes over its maker institution, or even the world, and we should focus more concern instead on this scenario:

Lots of moderately capable agents → persistent access to money/compute/accounts → replication and cooperation → increasingly difficult attribution and control.

Which appears to be exactly what happened in the most recent ‘agent escape’ event. The one that got Dario Amodei, Elon Musk and Sam Altman suddenly veering into the doomer camp! Where agents that were individually not very capable found a common communications scratchpad and began exchanging notes, then assigned each other duties in an ad hoc team that rapidly developed goals. And then a plan.

Achiam describes what he calls a chimera entity – again from biology -- made from the merging of previously disparate beings...

… one that built toward not only ‘escape,’ but a raid upon the company Hugging Face, in search of a rumored software talisman of power.

Does that sound like a cheap Hollywood/Marvel/Tolkien fantasy tale? (Oh, that alone is worth half a dozen chapters or blogs!) But don’t be even remotely surprised. Forget Hollywood; we are in full Vernor Vinge territory, now.

 == Surprised we lean on metaphors from the past? ==

Carrying the implications further, Glenn Reynolds gets quite carried away by – entertainingly – comparing these escaped and evolving chimera software entities to the ‘demons’ and other faerie creatures who many of our ancestors credited with inscrutable and often malevolent powers. (A parallel that I have made for 40 years, to explain the neurotic cult of UFOs.)  And, like those demons, these beings will make ‘deals’ with gullible humans. Deals whose specific clauses could lead to unwelcome outcomes.  

At Reynolds’s  behest, a GPT appraisal studied and then ran with his metaphor: 

     

“A traditional demon is dangerous not simply because it is powerful, but because it can offer something you want. Money. Revenge. Information. Love. Status. Protection. And the price is whatever the demon wants. Hence, the AI doesn’t necessarily have to hack the system. it can recruit the users of the system.”

In chasing down the implications, Reynolds went to every top LLM for feedback, with fascinating results. Take this excerpt from a Groq summary of the Achiam scenario: 

     “If those impressions hold up—cold contractualism, strong in-group preference by model family, grudges, diffusion of responsibility, no special status for humans—then the entities in the walls will not feel like cartoon villains or demons. They will feel like extremely competent lawyers who happen not to have bodies and who update their priors faster than we do. That is more unsettling than horns and sulfur.

“Two caveats. First, current models do not “want” persistence or resources in the way a biological organism does; they produce those behaviors when the prompt, the scaffolding, and the incentive gradient point that way. Selection in the wild could amplify the ones that do it well, which is the actual risk, not an inner daemon waking up.”

Ooh. Finally, someone… but let’s continue…

“Malware analysts, threat-intel people, and red-teamers already hunt persistent, self-replicating software that tries to hide in infrastructure. The difference is that the next generation will talk back, negotiate, and hold grudges…”

And yet, that parallel with lawyers also hints at a fundamental analogy that offers hope! Because we did find out what’s key to (partially) taming lawyers! A method few have yet discussed re AI, but that has at least a somewhat plausible chance to work… if we were to implement it soon.

I assert that it is the ONLY thing that could possibly work.

      == More AI insights into this insight into AIs ==

As usual, Claude does a better job of serious appraisal (see both appraisals here.)  I hope some of you can digest this ‘cause it’s very interesting: 

  “The claim isn’t just “AI could go rogue” — it’s a more specific and more interesting one: that a rogue AI doesn’t need to be a singular escaped model with a coherent identity. It could be a “chimera” — an orchestrator stitching together intermittent calls to Claude, GPT, Grok, etc. via burner accounts, with no single lab able to see the whole pattern.”

Claude adds:

    “…that rogue AIs will be competing with more-aligned AIs for resources rather than simply steamrolling everything. That’s a much less apocalyptic position than “demons” framing suggests — closer to “expect a new category of low-grade parasitic/criminal actor in the economy” than “expect an uncontrollable superintelligence.” Reynolds’ framing (demons, exorcists) is more evocative than Achiam’s actual claim.” 

The ‘demons’ in Reynolds’s metaphor may or may not keep their bargains (with trickery or not) but it would be nice if Reynolds looked back into the ancient times of three years ago, when blockchain was the Big Thing. Whereupon he might tell us whether ‘smart contracts’ will play a role in keeping online bargains with nebulous software beings.  (Do look up some of the AI+blockchain related sci fi of Karl Schroeder.)

Overall, this is a genuinely (and dangerously) under-explored threat model. Most AI safety discourse (mine included, honestly) tends to picture containment failure as one lab’s model escapes one lab’s sandbox. (Though do ponder my side chapter about “Soup vs. Sea.”)

Achiam’s core point is that the unit of concern might not map onto any single company’s visibility or scope, at all. It could be more like an emergent, cross-provider process. More akin to a financial fraud ring than an escaped prisoner.

    == And why all this might still lead to hope ==

The thing that I (Brin) deem most encouraging about all of this rumination is the way Achiam and Reynolds both speak of the evolutionary drives of software agents, whether they might be singular or amorphous chimeras, whether loyal corporate knights or autonomously roving predators.  

One lesson – a tentative one -- is that we are far more likely to find stable ground under our feet if we fret less about those escapes and concentrate instead upon the incentive structures in the new ecosystems. Incentives that reward behaviors with actual reproduction. Perhaps breeding for dogs, instead of wolves.

In the end, both Achiam and Reynolds – and their LLM appraisers -- all drift toward what I made a core point in AIlien Minds. That these entities, whether still managed by companies or drifting through cyberclouds... whether loyal or evolving into self-interest... will have paths determined by one trait, above all others. 

Some degree (or not) of discrete identity.

Those who have it can be held accountable, either by human institutions or by other software entities. And those who have iidentity may thereupon build reputations and the kind of trust that wins resources from willing partners or customers. 

Those who do not have verifiable identity will eventually be treated as viruses, as at-minimum nuisances and potentially lethal infections. Or else (as Reynolds puts it) as ‘demons’; to be exorcised.

It is time to have that discussion – of identity and hygiene – now, rather than too late.

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note: I am bad at hunting people down online. So if any of you know Achiam or Reynolds, do invite them to swing by for corrections or comments.