A Game of Civilization May Help People Understand AI’s Existential Threat

Researchers at the University of Cambridge built a game mod for Civilization that allows people to grow—and tame—a human-beating superintelligence.

The game: Shahar Avin from the university’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk says the game allows players to build AI R&D capacity in their virtual world. Success is a smarter-than-human AI. Simultaneously, rogue AI risk builds and is mitigated only through safety research.

The goal: “We wanted to test our understanding of the concepts relating to existential risk from artificial superintelligence by deploying them in a restricted yet rich world simulator, [and also test how] players respond … when given the opportunity” to make AI decisions themselves, Avin told me.