Historical milestone · 2008
Basic AI drives
Reviewed through September 18, 2026
2008 · Historical milestone
Basic AI drives
- Era
- 2000s
- Theme
- Safety, security & alignment
- Evidence form
- Decision-theoretic argument that capable goal-directed systems may instrumentally seek resources, self-preservation, efficiency, and goal protection
- School / paradigm
- Long-run AI safety
- Institution / context
- Self-Aware Systems / AGI conference
- Researchers
- Stephen Omohundro
School of thought
Safety, security, and machine ethics
Matched on representative researcher.
Intelligent systems must be treated as potentially fallible or adversarial components embedded in technical and social control structures.
Critique. Hard guarantees rarely cover adaptive learned systems and open environments; governance can lag capability.
Modern descendants. Alignment, prompt-injection defense, agent permissions, red teaming, incident response, and AI assurance.
Understand
Plain-language record, transferred from the reviewed source module.
Theory or experimental setup. Anticipated instrumental-convergence concerns and linked agent optimization to safety risks without assuming malice.
Result / historical claim. Argument depends on idealized rational agency and does not prove specific learned systems will exhibit every drive.
Apply
Professional implication, only where the reviewed record states one.
The checked-in record does not state a separate professional application for this entry. The topic page places it in the wider research lineage: Safety, security, and alignment.
Verify
Evidence status, stated limitations, and the external sources this record actually carries.
Evidence form. Decision-theoretic argument that capable goal-directed systems may instrumentally seek resources, self-preservation, efficiency, and goal protection
Limitation / debate. Power seeking, corrigibility, shutdown behavior, tool permissions, and alignment of autonomous agents.
Source status. The source link below is the verified link our reviewed topic research already carries for this milestone.
Reproduce
A reproduction tutorial is linked only when one exists for this exact record.
A reproduction tutorial is not yet available for this entry. The closest reviewed material is Safety, security, and alignment.
Cite or share
APA-like: This historical record carries a year only, and no author or publisher of record in the checked-in data. An APA reference would have to invent that metadata.
BibTeX: BibTeX requires an author and publication venue. Historical lineage entries store a narrative record and its source link, not structured authorship, so the field would be fabricated.