A randon thought occurring to me on a Thursday night (last night), developing into a Friday ponder on HWPC now, the next day.
Yes, arguably an odd comparison, but maybe there’s something to it.
Anyway, what Copilot had to say about it, making some good points, I thought:
Q: can you compare moving too fast to develop AI with failure to plan for what an iceberg might do to the Titanic?
Copilot said:
A: Yes. The comparison is not perfect, but it can be a useful analogy.
The Titanic disaster is often cited as an example of technological optimism outrunning risk preparation. The ship’s designers did consider collisions and included safety features, but they underestimated certain scenarios, carried too few lifeboats for everyone aboard, and operated in an environment where warnings about icebergs were not fully translated into maximum caution.
Some critics of rapid AI development argue that a similar pattern could occur:
Titanic: Confidence in a revolutionary technology
AI analogy: Confidence in increasingly powerful AI systems
Titanic: Belief that major failures were unlikely
AI analogy: Belief that AI risks are manageable or distant
Titanic: Safety measures existed but may not have matched worst-case scenarios
AI analogy: AI safeguards exist but may not address every future capability
Titanic: Iceberg warnings were received before the collision
AI analogy: Researchers have published warnings about potential AI risks
Titanic: Consequences emerged faster than expected once the crisis began
AI analogy: Some worry AI capabilities could advance faster than governance and safety measures
The analogy’s central lesson: it is not that AI will necessarily become dangerous, but that planning for low-probability, high-consequence events can be as important as pursuing innovation itself.
There is also an important difference. An iceberg was a specific, physical threat that already existed. AI risks are more uncertain and debated. Experts disagree on how serious various AI dangers are, whether they involve misinformation, job displacement, cyberattacks, autonomous weapons, loss of human control, or something else entirely. Unlike an iceberg, the exact hazard is not always clearly visible.
The mistake was not building the Titanic. The mistake was believing that technological achievement eliminated the need for extensive safety measures and preparations.
In that sense, some people do view AI safety research, regulation, testing, and monitoring as the equivalent of believing that a ship’s design is adequate, and ensures there are enough lifeboats, and is paying close attention to the equivalent of iceberg warnings before increasing speed through unfamiliar waters.
An interesting comparison. Let me know if you want to pursue specific aspects of it with AI’s design vs. the Titanic’s design.
(END OF COPILOT)
Those are some insights from Copilot, but it omits one that I have sometimes wondered about:
(1) did the designers of the Titanic actually consider the possibility of a “slicing” iceberg collision, as opposed to a “head on” one, or
(2) did such a “slicing” possibility never occur to them at all?
Copilot’s answer to this:
“Harland & Wolff’s design team, led by Edward Wilding, had explicitly calculated that Titanic could remain afloat if up to four forward compartments were flooded — the limit set by the watertight bulkhead system. This was a deliberate design choice, not an oversight, and it was assumed that flooding would be contained within those limits. The designers did not expect a breach that would open more than four compartments, but they also did not anticipate that the iceberg’s impact would be distributed across six compartments, as happened.”
which seems to be saying that the designers thought they had “done enough” to provide for safety if up to four compartments flooded, but no more. But it turned out to be six, with the ultimate catastrophic result.
But, getting back to AI, do we think we have “done enough” with the safety provisions we have already put in place with AI? That we have already protected enough “compartments” in the AI system “ship?”
Who knows what the "iceberg " in the future might turn out to be in that world of AI to come? And, like that real iceberg in 1912, what damage it might do that we, like those TItanic designers, didn’t do enough to foresee or prevent?