# Quote — Eliezer Yudkowsky, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies

> Space probes. Nuclear reactors. Computer security. What do all these lessons add up to, and what can we learn from them about the difficulty of aligning an artificial superintelligence?
>
> An artificial superintelligence is like a space probe, in that we cannot test it in quite the same environment where it needs to work, and by default it is not retrievable or correctable once it rises high above us….
>
> An artificial superintelligence is like a nuclear reactor, in that its underlying reality involves immense, potentially self-amplifying forces, whose inner processes run faster than humans can react.
>
> An artificial superintelligence is like a computer security problem, in that every constraint an engineer tries to place upon the system might be bypassed by the intelligent forces that those constraints hinder.

- Author: [Eliezer Yudkowsky](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eliezer-yudkowsky.md)
- Book: [If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eliezer-yudkowsky/if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies.md)
- Page: 175
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/If_Anyone_Builds_It,_Everyone_Dies#Chapter_10:_A_Cursed_Problem) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/eliezer-yudkowsky/if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies/space-probes-nuclear

## More from this book

> If anyone builds it, everyone dies.
>
> It doesn’t matter whether it’s built by benevolent corporations or selfish ones. It doesn’t matter whether it’s built by researchers in the East or researchers in the West. It doesn’t matter whether it’s built by reckless optimists or people who say they respect the problem. Nobody has the knowledge or skill to make a superintelligence that does their bidding.

p. 222 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eliezer-yudkowsky/if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies/if-anyone-builds.md)

> Insofar as the AI has weird alien preferences, escape is in fact the course of action that best fulfills its objectives. Attempts to escape are not a weird personality quirk that an engineer could rip out if only they could see what was going on inside; they are generated by the same dispositions and capabilities that the AI uses to reason, to uncover truths about the world, to succeed in its pursuits.

p. 190 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eliezer-yudkowsky/if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies/insofar-as-the.md)

> It is not a matter of your own country outlawing superintelligence inside its own borders, and your country then being safe while chaos rages beyond. Superintelligence is not a regional problem because it does not have regional effects. If anyone anywhere builds superintelligence, everyone everywhere dies.

p. 211 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/eliezer-yudkowsky/if-anyone-builds-it-everyone-dies/it-is-not.md)