AIs Should Have Proactive Prosocial Drives

Forethought argues that AIs should (sometimes) take proactive actions to benefit society, not just follow instructions.

AI should (sometimes) be proactively prosocial Tom Davidson William MacAskill Citations Cite Citations PDF Contact 29th March 2026 AI should (sometimes) be proactively prosocial Introduction What do we mean by “proactive prosocial drives”? Why do we think AI should have proactive prosocial drives? Other benefits of proactive prosocial drives Doesn’t this give AI companies too much influence? Won’t this make AI more likely to seek power? Won’t this make it harder to interpret evidence of egregious misalignment? Best of both worlds: deploy proactive prosocial AI externally and corrigible AI inte

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• Adi Mehta

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