AI Safety Subproblems for Software Engineering Researchers

In this 4-page manuscript we discuss the problem of long-term AI Safety from a Software Engineering (SE) research viewpoint. We briefly summarize long-term AI Safety, and the challenge of avoiding harms from AI as systems meet or exceed human capabilities, including software engineering capabilities (and approach AGI / “HLMI”). We perform a quantified literature review suggesting that AI Safety discussions are not common at SE venues. We make conjectures about how software might change with rising capabilities, and categorize “subproblems” which fit into traditional SE areas, proposing how work on similar problems might improve the future of AI and SE.