AI Agents Should be Regulated Based on the Extent of Their Autonomous Operations

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2503.04750v2
• Date: Mon, 26 May 2025 08:41:12 GMT
• Title: AI Agents Should be Regulated Based on the Extent of Their Autonomous Operations
• Authors: Takayuki Osogami,
• Abstract summary: We argue that AI agents should be regulated by the extent to which they operate autonomously.<n>Existing regulations often focus on computational scale as a proxy for potential harm.<n>We discuss relevant regulations and recommendations from scientists regarding existential risks.
• Score: 8.043534206868326
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: This position paper argues that AI agents should be regulated by the extent to which they operate autonomously. AI agents with long-term planning and strategic capabilities can pose significant risks of human extinction and irreversible global catastrophes. While existing regulations often focus on computational scale as a proxy for potential harm, we argue that such measures are insufficient for assessing the risks posed by agents whose capabilities arise primarily from inference-time computation. To support our position, we discuss relevant regulations and recommendations from scientists regarding existential risks, as well as the advantages of using action sequences -- which reflect the degree of an agent's autonomy -- as a more suitable measure of potential impact than existing metrics that rely on observing environmental states.

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