Can Socially Minded Governance Control the Artificial General Intelligence Beast?

This paper robustly concludes that it cannot. A model is constructed under idealized conditions that presume that the risks associated with artificial general intelligence (AGI) are real, that safe AGI products are possible, and that there exist socially minded funders who are interested in funding safe AGI, even if this does not maximize profits. It is demonstrated that a socially minded entity formed by such funders would not be able to minimize harm from AGI that unrestricted products released by for-profit firms might create. The reason is that a socially minded entity can only minimize the use of unrestricted AGI products in ex post competition with for-profit firms at a prohibitive financial cost and so, does not preempt the AGI developed by for-profit firms ex ante.

This paper was accepted by Maria Guadalupe, business strategy.