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Müller and Cannon's paper of 2021 argues that the orthogonality thesis requires a notion of instrumental intelligence while the claim of superintelligence beyond human control requires general intelligence, and that no notion of intelligence appears to be both orthogonal to goals and general enough to constitute existential risk. Copy claim link
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Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source
Date 2021 · publication Records dated 2021 → Role Contesting Register (kind of text) Nonfiction Engagement Engages a premise. Disputes that the notion of intelligence in the orthogonality thesis is the general intelligence that a highly intelligent, uncontrollable system would have. Scope and limits The paper accepts that the orthogonality thesis may hold for instrumental intelligence and that highly capable instrumental AI may pose a catastrophic risk; it disputes the thesis for general intelligence.
The evidence 02 primary source Supports the claim
Existential risk from AI and orthogonality: Can we have it both ways? ↗ Ratio (Wiley), open-access copy in the White Rose repository (eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/180886); in print in Ratio 35(1), 2022 · 2021
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Source excerpt “We find that the singularity claim requires a notion of ‘general intelligence’, while the orthogonality thesis requires a notion of ‘instrumental intelligence’.” Location in source Abstract, PDF p. 1
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
Machine-checked · 2026-10-31
Source details and check notes Authors Vincent C. Müller; Michael Cannon Version Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29 (SHA-256 ed1bee9e49b4e7f8d32df4fbb975f2b77f04136b7d5b996f4303ac07f5335c3b). publisher's open-access PDF as first published online ('Ratio. 2021;00:1–12'); received 17 January 2021, accepted 20 June 2021; the paginated 2022 issue was not compared. Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-29 Language English (en) Attribution Vincent C. Müller, Michael Cannon, “Existential risk from AI and orthogonality: Can we have it both ways?”, 2021. Reuse No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution. Check notes Candidate pack passage, arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI (research/risk-debate). The quotation (22 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. No human editorial review. primary source Supports the claim
Existential risk from AI and orthogonality: Can we have it both ways? ↗ Ratio (Wiley), open-access copy in the White Rose repository (eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/180886); in print in Ratio 35(1), 2022 · 2021
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Cite the original source Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.
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Source excerpt “It appears that there is no notion of intelligence that is orthogonal to goals, but also general enough to constitute existential risk.” Location in source Section 4, PDF p. 9
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
Machine-checked · 2026-10-31
Source details and check notes Authors Vincent C. Müller; Michael Cannon Version Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29 (SHA-256 ed1bee9e49b4e7f8d32df4fbb975f2b77f04136b7d5b996f4303ac07f5335c3b). publisher's open-access PDF as first published online ('Ratio. 2021;00:1–12'); received 17 January 2021, accepted 20 June 2021; the paginated 2022 issue was not compared. Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-29 Language English (en) Attribution Vincent C. Müller, Michael Cannon, “Existential risk from AI and orthogonality: Can we have it both ways?”, 2021. Reuse No open redistribution licence asserted. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution. Check notes Candidate pack passage, arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI (research/risk-debate). The quotation (22 words) matched the text retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29. Matching ignored differences of whitespace, case, quotation marks, dashes and Unicode compatibility forms, so the source’s typography can differ. No human editorial review. Status and meaning Editorial status. Not reviewed by an editor . An exploratory record that no editor has accepted. This status does not say whether a person has read any linked passage. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.
Relation. A passage of the document disputes the proposition or a premise it depends on. The record documents the text’s position, not who is right.
Date. Date of publication, as the source gives it.
Record ID rd-r01-muller-cannon-2021-existential-risk-orthogonality