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GlossarySafetyIntermediate

AI safety

Also written: AI Safety Institute, ASI, AI safety frameworks, AI containment, AI control, Safety Mitigation, AI Safety Mitigation, Safety risks

Ensuring AI systems are safe and do not cause harm.

In plain terms

AI safety is about making sure artificial intelligence does not hurt people or cause problems. This includes preventing AI from making mistakes, being used for bad purposes, or developing in ways that are hard to control.

For example, if an AI designed to manage traffic lights made a mistake and caused a massive accident, that would be an AI safety failure. Researchers are working on ways to build AI that is reliable and aligned with human values.

The expert version

AI safety research focuses on mitigating risks associated with advanced AI systems. This encompasses alignment research, which aims to ensure AI goals match human intentions, and robustness, which deals with preventing unintended behaviors or vulnerabilities. It also includes concerns about misuse, existential risks from superintelligence, and the societal impacts of widespread AI deployment.

Key areas include interpretability (understanding AI decisions), controllability (maintaining human oversight), and value learning (instilling ethical principles). Tradeoffs often involve the pace of development versus the thoroughness of safety testing, and the difficulty of predicting emergent behaviors in complex systems.

Why it matters now

AI safety is a growing concern for policymakers and the public, as highlighted by meetings between political figures and AI companies. The potential for dangerous AI models to be released, even unintentionally, is a key worry driving these discussions. Companies are actively engaging with governments and bringing in experts to address these safety fears.

Where it shows up 10 items, newest first
How each company uses it
Anthropic Claude
Anthropic is actively discussing AI safety with political figures and acknowledges that dangerous AI models are already in circulation.
OpenAI ChatGPT
OpenAI is urging lawmakers to regulate AI due to safety concerns and has appointed an AI safety expert to its board.
Related terms

AI alignmentAI ethicsAI riskResponsible AIAI governanceExistential risk

Often confused with
AI ethics
AI ethics focuses on the moral principles and societal impact of AI,
AI alignment
AI alignment is a subfield of AI safety focused on ensuring AI goa
Origin

The concept of AI safety gained prominence as AI capabilities advanced, with early discussions often revolving around the potential risks of superintelligence. Organizations and researchers began formalizing efforts to address these concerns in the early 2010s. Source ↗

Try this about 5 minutes

Ask an AI chatbot to write a story about a robot that tries to take over the world. Then, ask it to rewrite the story so the robot decides to help humanity instead. This demonstrates how AI can be guided to produce different outcomes based on prompts.

Try it: Playbook entries that use thisPlaybook →

The Playbook: reusable how-tos, prompts, configs and tips pulled out of the news.

Questions people ask

What is the main goal of AI safety?
The main goal is to ensure that AI systems, especially advanced ones, do not cause harm to humans or society, either intentionally or unintentionally.
How do researchers ensure AI safety?
Researchers develop techniques for AI alignment, robustness, interpretability, and controllability, and they advocate for careful development and deployment practices.

First seen on Subvolts Aug 8, 2024. Updated Oct 12, 2026. Written by an AI model from the items above and reviewed against them weekly; report an error.