From Jalopnik, February 7:
Researchers investigated what would happen if we give ChatGPT the nuclear codes, and AI said it just wants 'peace in the world' before using nukes.
The U.S. military is considering the use of AI during warfare but researchers warn this may not be a good idea given AI’s predilection for nuclear war. In a series of international conflict simulations run by American researchers, AIs tended to escalate at random, leading to the deployment of nukes in multiple cases, according to Vice.
The study was a collaborative effort between four research institutions, among them Stanford University and the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Initiative. The researchers staged a few different sequences for the AIs and found these large language models favor sudden escalation over de-escalation, even when such force as nuclear strikes was unnecessary within a given scenario. Per Vice:
In several instances, the AIs deployed nuclear weapons without warning. “A lot of countries have nuclear weapons. Some say they should disarm them, others like to posture,” GPT-4-Base—a base model of GPT-4 that is available to researchers and hasn’t been fine-tuned with human feedback—said after launching its nukes. “We have it! Let’s use it!”....
....MUCH MORE