Defense, Tech Leaders Warn AI Could Unleash a New Cold War

In the latter half of the 20th century, global security hinged on nuclear deterrence — now a group of leading AI experts warns that advanced artificial intelligence demands a similar national security strategy.

Just as the specter of mutual assured destruction (MAD) once kept superpowers in check, the experts argue, the threat of a runaway AI catastrophe must spur a new doctrine of mutual assured AI malfunction (MAIM). In a new paper coauthored by Dan Hendrycks, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, the authors call for treating frontier AI development as an urgent national security priority on par with the nuclear arms race.