Alexander Shoytov

Russian Officials Call for Embedding Fear and Conscience Mechanisms into Generative AI

At the BIS Summit conference on business information security, Deputy Minister of Digital Development Alexander Shoytov argued that generative AI lacks an essential sense of fear toward errors. He proposed building in a technical mechanism that forces models to evaluate consequences, recognize insufficient data, and halt actions when risks are too high. This would address current issues where AI confidently produces hallucinations or executes dangerous commands without human-like risk awareness. Nikolay Lishin, Deputy Head of Russia's FMBA, went further by suggesting models should also incorporate a form of conscience to assess the ethical acceptability of actions. The discussion highlighted risks for AI agents with access to corporate systems, where unchecked behavior could lead to data leaks, file deletions, or infrastructure disruptions. Officials framed these ideas as necessary to create reliable AI that is intelligent yet cautious and morally constrained.