Strong AI and the Future Disruption of War (Part 2 of 3)

How the Race to AGI Might Lead to Paradise or Create Paradise Lost

This is part two of a three-part blog explores AI's transformative impact, focusing on its evolution and implications and delivered in my preferred style for intellectual exploration of wicked challenges. It will blend academia with pop culture and some snark. Part 1 examined AI's rapid progression over the next 12-18 months, introducing agentic AI and its potential to disrupt professionalization, paving the way for artificial general intelligence (AGI). Part 2, located below, is where I delve into AGI’s security challenges by 2030-2050, questioning global governance, non-proliferation policies, and risks of misuse by authoritarian regimes. Part 3 (coming soon!) envisions AGI reshaping conflict and war, exploring utopian promises, societal disparities, and existential threats. In each part of this 3-part series for subscribers, I offer plenty of new perspectives, links to other content and readings, and try to have fun along the way as we consider technological elimination, replacement, or societal transformation. Each part builds on AI’s paradigm shift, urging readers to consider ethical, strategic, and societal ramifications. If you have not yet subscribed, consider doing so now:

Part 2: 2030 and beyond- the Strong AI Revolution

In Part 1, we framed what agentic AI is and how we are also fast approaching ‘strong AI’ that carries far more disruption for societies, including unprecedented security challenges. Here in Part 2, we will unpack those. Part 1 also explained the ‘century of progress in a decade’ through strong AI, so if you have not yet read Part 1, be sure to read that first. Otherwise, the content below may not make sense.

What security challenges does artificial general intelligence or AGI and this “century of progress compressed into a decade” bring with it? How might we consider 2035-2050 differently if we accept his idea that AGI, if generated by 2028-2035, could cause such transformation? If AGI were realized even sooner, such as 2026, we might shift the timelines up appropriately. Here is where Kermit and everyone else should start screaming and waving their arms. I offer a series of questions that explore the gaps in our knowledge and strategy on AI and the rise of strong AI. How might we as a species attempt to safeguard ourselves from our own radical creations?

Let’s begin with four critical questions on AGI and strategic implications for 2030-2050:

First question: Does the rise of AGI suggest a clear need for a global AGI policy with enforcement capabilities like nuclear non-proliferation or the Outer Space Treaty? Take the OST… it was crafted and signed in 1967 in the middle of the Cold War and the Space Race, where nuclear missiles became intercontinental using the same technology needed to get humans into orbit and later to the lunar surface. There clearly is no valid reason to try to stop another nation from exploring space, but there are clear reasons for one nation or a group of nations to view rocketry development as an existential security threat if the nose of that rocket contains nuclear bombs instead of curious astronauts. Following 1945 and the American demonstration of atomic weaponry on Japan which ended one war (but started a Cold War), there were three distinct possibilities for the system of states in the new Nuclear Age.