THE PETROV DILEMMA & AI

N 1983, the Soviet Union's Oko early-warning system issued a critical alert, signalling an imminent nuclear strike from the US.

- ADITYA SINHA

The system, based on satellite data and algorithmic analysis, had malfunctioned, misinterpreting sunlight reflections on high-altitude clouds as missile launches. The officer on duty, Stanislav Petrov, faced a critical dilemma: to trust the seemingly precise output or rely on human intuition shaped by broader context and uncertainty. He chose the latter, averting a nuclear catastrophe.

This moment serves as a haunting precursor to the challenges we now face with AI. It highlights the philosophical question of epistemic reliability: How do we ensure that machine-generated knowledge aligns with truth in high-stakes scenarios?

The electronics and IT ministry recently organised a consultation to establish the India AI Safety Institute, reflecting global efforts to address the multifaceted challenges posed by advanced AI technologies. The US, UK, European Union, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Canada, France, Kenya and Australia have already established institutes to evaluate AI systems, conduct adversarial testing, and develop methodologies for mitigating risks such as bias, manipulation and unintended behaviour. However, they should also look at the ethical questions.

An AI safety institute should look at epistemological and ethical dimensions of decision-making. What does it mean for an AI system to "understand" risk? How can it differentiate between signal and noise in contexts it has not been explicitly trained for? And how do we embed systems with the humility to defer when certainty is an illusion? These questions lie at the intersection of philosophy, ethics and systems design, defining the very essence of safe AI.