Artificial General Intelligence's Five Hard National Security Problems

The potential emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is plausible and should be taken seriously by the U.S. national security community. Yet the pace and potential progress of AGI's emergence — as well as the composition of a post-AGI future — is shrouded in a cloud of uncertainty. This poses a challenge for strategists and policymakers trying to discern what potential threats and opportunities might emerge on the path to AGI and once AGI is achieved.

This paper puts forth five hard problems that AGI's emergence presents for U.S. national security: (1) wonder weapons, (2) systemic shifts in power, (3) nonexperts empowered to develop weapons of mass destruction, (4) artificial entities with agency, and (5) instability. In much of the discourse on AGI, policymakers and analysts argue past one another with differing opinions on which issues deserve immediate focus and resources. Yet the authors have observed that proposals to advance progress on one problem can undermine progress on — if not outright ignore — another. They offer these five hard national security problems to help structure such discourse by providing a common language to communicate about risks and opportunities of AGI and a rubric to evaluate alternative strategies.