Against racing to AGI: Cooperation, deterrence, and catastrophic risks

AGI Racing is the view that it is in the self-interest of major actors in AI development, especially powerful nations, to accelerate their frontier AI development to build highly capable AI, especially artificial general intelligence (AGI), before competitors have a chance. We argue against AGI Racing. First, the downsides of racing to AGI are much higher than portrayed by this view. Racing to AGI would substantially increase catastrophic risks from AI, including nuclear instability, and undermine the prospects of technical AI safety research to be effective. Second, the expected benefits of racing may be lower than proponents of AGI Racing hold. In particular, it is questionable whether winning the race enables complete domination over losers. Third, international cooperation and coordination, and perhaps carefully crafted deterrence measures, constitute viable alternatives to racing to AGI which have much smaller risks and promise to deliver most of the benefits that racing to AGI is supposed to provide. Hence, racing to AGI is not in anyone's self-interest as other actions, particularly incentivizing and seeking international cooperation around AI issues, are preferable.