Acknowledgments: The core scheme here was suggested by Prof. Gabriel Weil.

There has been growing interest in the deal-making agenda: humans make deals with AIs (misaligned but lacking decisive strategic advantage) where they promise to be safe and useful for some fixed term (e.g. 2026-2028) and we promise to compensate them in the future, conditional on (i) verifying the AIs were compliant, and (ii) verifying the AIs would spend the resources in an acceptable way.[1]

I think the deal-making agenda breaks down into two main subproblems:

How can we make credible commitments to AIs?
Would credible commitments motivate an AI to be safe and useful?

There are other issues, but when I've discussed deal-making with people, (1) and (2) are the most common issues raised. See footnote for some other issues in dealmaking.[2]

Here is my current best assessment of how we can make credible commitments to AIs.

[...]

The original text contained 2 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
June 27th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vxfEtbCwmZKu9hiNr/proposal-for-making-credible-commitments-to-ais

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Two contract structure diagrams comparing basic and proposed legal frameworks.

The top diagram shows a simple legal contract between AIs and L (enforced by jurisdiction J), while the bottom diagram illustrates a more complex scheme with multiple personal promises and legal contracts involving AIs, multiple P entities, L, and multiple jurisdictions.

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“Proposal for making credible commitments to AIs.” by Cleo Nardo

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Proposal for making credible commitments to AIs.” by Cleo Nardo