Formal methods for AI safety: world models, verifiers, and sanctions
devanshmehta · x · 2026-08-22
The author explains an engineering approach to AI safety using formal methods, comprising three components:
- World Model: Encodes societal risks to probabilistically answer queries about the consequences of an LLM's output (requires democratic oversight).
- Verifier: Guarantees the new model satisfies the safety specifications of the world model.
- Impact Modeling: Simulates the model's future effects relative to safety specs.
This is analogous to self-driving cars: modeling terrain (world model) -> checking safety (verifier) -> running simulations. The ultimate goal is to establish safety standards before release, like aircraft certification; non-compliant releases would face sanctions (similar to Tornado Cash).
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