A “Manhattan Project” for artificial intelligence risk is a bad idea

Recently, a number of viral stories — including one by Vox — described an Air Force simulation in which an autonomous drone identified its operator as a barrier to executing its mission and then sought to eliminate the operator. This story featured everything that prominent individuals have been sounding the alarm over: misaligned objectives, humans outside of the loop, and an eventual killer robot. The only problem? The “simulation” never happened — the Air Force official who related the story later said that it was only a “thought exercise,” not an actual…