Here’s another angle that a hardline libertarian might take (partly referenced in the footnote). I’m not quite sure how far I’d want to take the underlying principle, but let’s run with it for now:
Libertarians generally agree that it’s permissible to use (proportionate) force to stop someone from engaging in aggressive violence. That could mean grabbing someone’s arm if they’re punching in your direction, even if they haven’t hit you yet. You don’t necessarily have to wait until they’ve harmed you before you use any force against them. The standard for this is probably something like “if a reasonable person in your position would conclude with high probability that the other person is trying to harm you”.
Next, let’s imagine that you discover that your neighbor Bob is planning to poison you. Maybe you overhear him telling someone else about his plans; and you notice a mail delivery of a strange container labeled “strychnine” to his house, and look up what it means; maybe you somehow get hold of his diary, which describes his hatred for you and has notes about your schedule and musings about how and when would be the best time to add the poison to your food. At some point, a reasonable person would have very high certainty that Bob really is planning to kill you. And then you would be justified in using some amount of force, at least to stop him and possibly to punish him. For tactical reasons it’s best to bring in third parties, show them the evidence, and get them on your side; ideally this would all be established in some kind of court. But in principle, you would have the right to use force yourself.
Or, like, suppose Bob is setting up sticks of dynamite right beside your house. Still on his property! But on the edge, as close to your house as possible. And setting up a fuse, and building a little barrier that would reduce the amount of blast that would reach his house. Surely at some point in this process you have the right to intervene forcibly, before Bob lights the fuse. (Ideally it’d be resolved through speech, but suppose Bob just insists that he’s setting it up because it would look really cool, and refuses to stop. “Does it have to be real dynamite?” “Yeah, otherwise it wouldn’t look authentic.” “I flat out don’t believe you. Stop it.” “No, this is my property and I have the right.”)
Next, suppose Bob is trying to set up a homemade nuclear reactor, or perhaps to breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria, for purposes of scientific study. Let’s say that is truly his motive—he isn’t trying to endanger anyone’s lives. But he also has a much higher confidence in his own ability to avoid any accidents, and a much higher risk tolerance, than you do. I think the principle of self-defense may also extend to here: if a reasonable person believes with high confidence that Bob is trying to do a thing that, while not intended to harm you, has a high probability of causing serious harm to you, then you have the right to use force to stop it. (Again, for tactical reasons it’s best to bring in third parties, and to try words before actually using force.)
If one is legitimately setting up something like a nuclear reactor, ideally the thing to do would be to tell everyone “I’m going to set up this potentially-dangerous thing. Here are the safety precautions I’m going to take. If you have objections, please state them now.” [For a nuclear reactor, the most obvious precaution is, of course, building it far away from humans, but I think there are exceptions.] And probably post signs at the site with a link to your plans. And if your precautions are actually good, then in theory you reach a position where a reasonable person would not believe your actions have a high chance of seriously harming them.
The notion of “what a reasonable person would believe” is potentially very flexible, depending on how society is. Which is dangerous, from the perspective of “this might possibly justify a wide range of actions”. But it can be convenient when designing a society. For example, if there’s a particular group of people who make a practice of evaluating dangerous activities, and “everyone knows” that they’re competent, hard-nosed, have condemned some seriously bad projects while approving some others that have since functioned successfully… then you might be at the point where you could say that an educated reasonable person, upon discovering the nuclear reactor, would check with that group and learn that they’ve approved it [with today’s technology, that would mean the reactor would have a sign saying “This project is monitored and approved by the Hard-Nosers, approval ID 1389342″, and you could go to the Hard-Nosers’ website and confirm this] before attempting to use force to stop it; and an uneducated reasonable person would at least speak with a worker before taking action, and learn of the existence of the Hard-Nosers, and wouldn’t act before doing some research. In other words, you might be able to justify some kind of regulatory board being relevant in practice.
(There might be layers to this. “People running a legitimate nuclear reactor would broadcast to the world the fact that they’re doing it and the safety precautions they’re taking! Therefore, if you won’t tell me, that’s strong evidence that your precautions are insufficient, and justifies my using force to stop you!” “Granted. Here’s our documentation.” “You also have to let me inspect the operation—otherwise that’s evidence you have something to hide!” “Well, no. This equipment is highly valuable, so not letting random civilians come near it whenever they want is merely evidence that we don’t want it to be stolen.” “Ok, have as many armed guards follow me around as you like.” “That’s expensive.” “Sounds like there’s no way to distinguish your operation from an unsafe one, then, in which case a reasonable person’s priors would classify you as an unacceptable risk.” “We do allow a group of up to 20 members of the public to tour the facility on the first of every month; join the next one if you like.” ”… Fine.”
And then there could be things where a reasonable person would be satisfied with that; but then someone tells everyone, “Hey, regularly scheduled inspections give them plenty of time to hide any bad stuff they’re doing, so they provide little evidentiary value”, and then if those who run the reactor refuse to allow any unscheduled inspections, that might put them on the wrong side of the threshold of “expected risk in the eyes of a reasonable external observer”. So what you’d effectively be required to do would change based on what that random person had said in public and to you. Which is not, generally, a good property for a legal system. But… I dunno, maybe the outcome is ok? This would only apply to people running potentially dangerous projects, and it makes some kind of sense that they’d keep being beholden to public opinion.)
So we could treat increasingly-powerful AI similarly to nuclear reactors: can be done for good reasons, but also has a substantial probability of causing terrible fallout. In principle, if someone is building a super-AI without taking enough precautions, you could judge that they’re planning to take actions that with high-enough probability are going to harm you badly enough that it would be proper self-defense for you to stop them by force.
But, once again, tactical considerations make it worth going to third parties and making your case to them, and it’s almost certainly not worth acting unless they’re on your side. Unfortunately, there is much less general agreement about the dangers of AI (and the correct safety strategies) than about the dangers of nuclear reactors, and it’s unlikely in the near future that you’d get public opinion / the authorities on your side about existing AI efforts (though things can change quickly). But if someone did take some unilateral (say maybe 1% of the public supported them) highly destructive action to stop a particular AI lab, that would probably be counterproductive: they’d go to jail, it would discredit anyone associated with them, martyr their opposition, at best delay that lab by a bit, and motivate all AI labs to increase physical security (and possibly hide what they’re doing).
For the moment, persuading people is the only real way to pursue this angle.
Here’s another angle that a hardline libertarian might take (partly referenced in the footnote). I’m not quite sure how far I’d want to take the underlying principle, but let’s run with it for now:
Libertarians generally agree that it’s permissible to use (proportionate) force to stop someone from engaging in aggressive violence. That could mean grabbing someone’s arm if they’re punching in your direction, even if they haven’t hit you yet. You don’t necessarily have to wait until they’ve harmed you before you use any force against them. The standard for this is probably something like “if a reasonable person in your position would conclude with high probability that the other person is trying to harm you”.
Next, let’s imagine that you discover that your neighbor Bob is planning to poison you. Maybe you overhear him telling someone else about his plans; and you notice a mail delivery of a strange container labeled “strychnine” to his house, and look up what it means; maybe you somehow get hold of his diary, which describes his hatred for you and has notes about your schedule and musings about how and when would be the best time to add the poison to your food. At some point, a reasonable person would have very high certainty that Bob really is planning to kill you. And then you would be justified in using some amount of force, at least to stop him and possibly to punish him. For tactical reasons it’s best to bring in third parties, show them the evidence, and get them on your side; ideally this would all be established in some kind of court. But in principle, you would have the right to use force yourself.
Or, like, suppose Bob is setting up sticks of dynamite right beside your house. Still on his property! But on the edge, as close to your house as possible. And setting up a fuse, and building a little barrier that would reduce the amount of blast that would reach his house. Surely at some point in this process you have the right to intervene forcibly, before Bob lights the fuse. (Ideally it’d be resolved through speech, but suppose Bob just insists that he’s setting it up because it would look really cool, and refuses to stop. “Does it have to be real dynamite?” “Yeah, otherwise it wouldn’t look authentic.” “I flat out don’t believe you. Stop it.” “No, this is my property and I have the right.”)
Next, suppose Bob is trying to set up a homemade nuclear reactor, or perhaps to breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria, for purposes of scientific study. Let’s say that is truly his motive—he isn’t trying to endanger anyone’s lives. But he also has a much higher confidence in his own ability to avoid any accidents, and a much higher risk tolerance, than you do. I think the principle of self-defense may also extend to here: if a reasonable person believes with high confidence that Bob is trying to do a thing that, while not intended to harm you, has a high probability of causing serious harm to you, then you have the right to use force to stop it. (Again, for tactical reasons it’s best to bring in third parties, and to try words before actually using force.)
If one is legitimately setting up something like a nuclear reactor, ideally the thing to do would be to tell everyone “I’m going to set up this potentially-dangerous thing. Here are the safety precautions I’m going to take. If you have objections, please state them now.” [For a nuclear reactor, the most obvious precaution is, of course, building it far away from humans, but I think there are exceptions.] And probably post signs at the site with a link to your plans. And if your precautions are actually good, then in theory you reach a position where a reasonable person would not believe your actions have a high chance of seriously harming them.
The notion of “what a reasonable person would believe” is potentially very flexible, depending on how society is. Which is dangerous, from the perspective of “this might possibly justify a wide range of actions”. But it can be convenient when designing a society. For example, if there’s a particular group of people who make a practice of evaluating dangerous activities, and “everyone knows” that they’re competent, hard-nosed, have condemned some seriously bad projects while approving some others that have since functioned successfully… then you might be at the point where you could say that an educated reasonable person, upon discovering the nuclear reactor, would check with that group and learn that they’ve approved it [with today’s technology, that would mean the reactor would have a sign saying “This project is monitored and approved by the Hard-Nosers, approval ID 1389342″, and you could go to the Hard-Nosers’ website and confirm this] before attempting to use force to stop it; and an uneducated reasonable person would at least speak with a worker before taking action, and learn of the existence of the Hard-Nosers, and wouldn’t act before doing some research. In other words, you might be able to justify some kind of regulatory board being relevant in practice.
(There might be layers to this. “People running a legitimate nuclear reactor would broadcast to the world the fact that they’re doing it and the safety precautions they’re taking! Therefore, if you won’t tell me, that’s strong evidence that your precautions are insufficient, and justifies my using force to stop you!” “Granted. Here’s our documentation.” “You also have to let me inspect the operation—otherwise that’s evidence you have something to hide!” “Well, no. This equipment is highly valuable, so not letting random civilians come near it whenever they want is merely evidence that we don’t want it to be stolen.” “Ok, have as many armed guards follow me around as you like.” “That’s expensive.” “Sounds like there’s no way to distinguish your operation from an unsafe one, then, in which case a reasonable person’s priors would classify you as an unacceptable risk.” “We do allow a group of up to 20 members of the public to tour the facility on the first of every month; join the next one if you like.” ”… Fine.”
And then there could be things where a reasonable person would be satisfied with that; but then someone tells everyone, “Hey, regularly scheduled inspections give them plenty of time to hide any bad stuff they’re doing, so they provide little evidentiary value”, and then if those who run the reactor refuse to allow any unscheduled inspections, that might put them on the wrong side of the threshold of “expected risk in the eyes of a reasonable external observer”. So what you’d effectively be required to do would change based on what that random person had said in public and to you. Which is not, generally, a good property for a legal system. But… I dunno, maybe the outcome is ok? This would only apply to people running potentially dangerous projects, and it makes some kind of sense that they’d keep being beholden to public opinion.)
So we could treat increasingly-powerful AI similarly to nuclear reactors: can be done for good reasons, but also has a substantial probability of causing terrible fallout. In principle, if someone is building a super-AI without taking enough precautions, you could judge that they’re planning to take actions that with high-enough probability are going to harm you badly enough that it would be proper self-defense for you to stop them by force.
But, once again, tactical considerations make it worth going to third parties and making your case to them, and it’s almost certainly not worth acting unless they’re on your side. Unfortunately, there is much less general agreement about the dangers of AI (and the correct safety strategies) than about the dangers of nuclear reactors, and it’s unlikely in the near future that you’d get public opinion / the authorities on your side about existing AI efforts (though things can change quickly). But if someone did take some unilateral (say maybe 1% of the public supported them) highly destructive action to stop a particular AI lab, that would probably be counterproductive: they’d go to jail, it would discredit anyone associated with them, martyr their opposition, at best delay that lab by a bit, and motivate all AI labs to increase physical security (and possibly hide what they’re doing).
For the moment, persuading people is the only real way to pursue this angle.