  We examine how the federal government can enhance its AI emergency
preparedness: the ability to detect and prepare for time-sensitive national
security threats relating to AI. Emergency preparedness can improve the
government's ability to monitor and predict AI progress, identify national
security threats, and prepare effective response plans for plausible threats
and worst-case scenarios. Our approach draws from fields in which experts
prepare for threats despite uncertainty about their exact nature or timing
(e.g., counterterrorism, cybersecurity, pandemic preparedness). We focus on
three plausible risk scenarios: (1) loss of control (threats from a powerful AI
system that becomes capable of escaping human control), (2) cybersecurity
threats from malicious actors (threats from a foreign actor that steals the
model weights of a powerful AI system), and (3) biological weapons
proliferation (threats from users identifying a way to circumvent the
safeguards of a publicly-released model in order to develop biological
weapons.) We evaluate the federal government's ability to detect, prevent, and
respond to these threats. Then, we highlight potential gaps and offer
recommendations to improve emergency preparedness. We conclude by describing
how future work on AI emergency preparedness can be applied to improve
policymakers' understanding of risk scenarios, identify gaps in detection
capabilities, and form preparedness plans to improve the effectiveness of
federal responses to AI-related national security threats.
