Falling Behind Drives Unsafe Development in an Idealised AI Race Experiment
Technological races create tension between speed and safety: actors may gain by moving faster than competitors, even when risky development is harmful. This is prominent in debates about artificial intelligence (AI), where competitive pressure is often argued to incentivise riskier, less safety-conscious development. We study this using a framed behavioural experiment based on an idealised AI race, in which paired participants repeatedly chose between Safe and Unsafe development under an uncertain time horizon. Unsafe development gave faster progress and higher immediate payoffs but accumulated private risk up to a treatment-specific maximum of 10\%, 60\%, or 90\%; the race's competitive ...
| Authors | Elias Fernández Domingos, The Anh Han |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.AI |
| Published | 28 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 28 July 2026 |
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