Claim · 2025-06-02 · publication · Stated in source · Supported

Tarsney's paper of 2 June 2025 (arXiv v1) concludes that the claim that power is a convergent instrumental goal contains at least an element of truth but may have limited predictive utility, because an agent's options cannot always be ranked by power without information about its final goals.

One recorded claim. The claim panel gives its qualification, the source passages with their place in each source, and how it was checked.

What it connects

Will artificial agents pursue power by default? → contests → Instrumental convergence

Where it appears

Arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI →

Claim and evidence

Will artificial agents pursue power by default?contests ↓Instrumental convergence

Machine-checked, not reviewed by an editorStated in sourceSupported

Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source

Date: 2025-06-02 · publication Records dated 2025 →
Role: Contesting
Register (kind of text): Nonfiction
Engagement: Engages a premise. Disputes the predictive strength of the convergence claim by arguing that power rankings depend on the final goals that the claim abstracts from.

Scope and limitsA qualified dispute: the paper accepts part of the claim and states that convergence is more predictive for agents with a good chance of near-absolute power.

The evidence 01

primary sourceSupports the claim

Will artificial agents pursue power by default?

arXiv (2506.06352v1) · 2025-06-02

Cite the original source

Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.

Source excerpt

“I conclude that this claim contains at least an element of truth, but might turn out to have limited predictive utility, since an agent’s options cannot always be ranked in terms of power in the absence of substantive information about the agent’s final goals.”

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: Christian Tarsney
Version: Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29 (SHA-256 36a4bf4f0252a95bfc36bfd0b6441299f433520ca62b7e7db33a660d85c4474c). arXiv v1 of 2 June 2025.
Canonical address: Open the canonical source ↗
Accessed: 2026-10-29
Language: English (en)
Attribution: Christian Tarsney, “Will artificial agents pursue power by default?”, 2025-06-02.
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 (44 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 the arXiv v1 submission.

Record ID rd-r02-tarsney-2025-power-by-default