Google DeepMind is worried about the potential risks of millions of AI agents interacting with each other, and has teamed up with several organizations to announce a $10 million funding pot for researchers to study the behavior of multi-agent systems.
The funding pot is joined by Schmidt Sciences, a philanthropic foundation set up by Eric and Wendy Schmidt; ARIA, the UK government’s moonshot agency; the Cooperative AI foundation, a UK-based nonprofit research outfit; and Google.org, Google’s charitable arm.
Shah aims to kick-start research outside tech companies, as academia can look far into the future and do work that isn’t top of mind at industry labs.
They would like to establish a field of research for multi-agent safety, which currently does not exist.
It is a concern that as more AI agents get deployed and begin working together, imagined scenarios could become real.
Related: Driving Marketing ROI with a Revops Agency
Shah thinks we have a few more months to go before agents
The concern is that as more and more AI agents get deployed and begin working together, we could hit a tipping point where imagined scenarios become real.
“We see this with humanity, too,” says Shah. “Our institutions can accomplish things that no individual human can.”
Fox notes that we’ve got this digital commons that is integral to how society works, and you really want to ensure that this doesn’t descend into just absolute anarchy.
They both think that the only way to understand what might happen when large numbers of multi-agent systems interact with each other is to run realistic simulations.
Related: What is Low Code App Development Platform, and Why Spend on it?
Researchers can’t predict what’s going to happen by studying single agents, or even small groups of agents, in isolation.
Google DeepMind is not the only top AI firm warning about the risks of the technology it is building.
The $10 million funding pot is a significant investment.
It remains to be seen how effective this effort will be in preventing unsafe scenarios.
