The Knife Edge of Value Alignment in AI: Utopia or Extinction
When:
Monday, Oct 01, 2018 7:00p -
9:00p
Monday, Oct 01, 2018 7:00p -
9:00p
Where:
Café ArtScience
650 East Kendall Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
Admission:
$15
Categories:
Tech
Event website:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-knife-edge-of-value-alignment-in-ai-utopia-or-extinction-tickets-50020496652
Doors open @ 6pm -- Come early and meet other Long Now thinkers -- Presentations start @ 7pm
A Long Now Boston Community Conversation with
Richard Mallah and Lucas Perry of The Future of Life Institute [FLi]
Summary:
AI: Artificial Intelligence is one of this century’s most misunderstood buzzwords. In Kurzweil's “Singularity”, it represents a glorious future where human toil and suffering is ended. In The Matrix, it conjures a future dominated by malevolent supermachines feeding on the energies of human slaves. In reality, AI is fast becoming the ubiquitous hand-maiden of human invention and ingenuity for much of what we relish in our day to day. From search engines to the energy grid; autonomous vehicles to life support systems; food production to weather forecasting; data security to anti-ballistic missile guidance. The list of AI processes we can no longer get by without grows daily.
AI programming ultimately relies on simple, digital decision chains, but they are at the point where machines can teach themselves. The Intelligence may be artificial and “inhuman”, but is increasingly more capable than our own. In the world of zeroes and ones, a near perfection of logical functioning can be achieved, with AI systems that are free of human foibles and the slowness of biological systems, free of human attributes like emotion, intuition, love, or a sense of right and wrong. Or are they?
What happens when we ask the algorithms to make decisions for us - decisions that may have life and death consequences? And what happens if, or when, their intelligence begins to match or exceed our own - the level of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) where we can no longer tell if an agent is human or machine? Autonomous decision-making and human level agency will require moral and ethical guidance. Do our AI programmers have the perspective — historical, philosophical, moral — to be the arbiters of that guidance? Or do we let the algorithms themselves learn human morality by emulating humans? How do we properly align the values of our inventions, to achieve the goal of a beneficent future for all?
The Long Now Boston Conversation Series hosts the Future of Life Institute's Richard Mallah and Lucas Perry to share their research on the frontiers of Value Alignment and the implications for the future of AI and AGI.
Join the conversation and be part of the solution.
$15 in advance // $20 at the door. Students w/ID admitted free, but ticket required. Audience participation is encouraged.
The [FLI] is one of the world’s leading organizations exploring the potential existential challenges and solutions of technology in the fields of AI, Biotech, Nuclear Weapons and Climate Change.
Richard Mallah, Director of AI Projects FLI, has over fifteen years of experience leading AI research and AI product teams in industry, lending an appreciation for tradeoffs at all AI product lifecycle stages. Richard holds a degree in computer science, AI, and machine learning from Columbia University, and is well read in natural philosophy.
Lucas Perry, Project Coordinator FLI, focuses on enabling and delivering existential risk mitigation efforts ranging from direct interventions, to advocacy, and enabling research. He studied philosophy at Boston College and has been working in AI safety and existential risk ever since.
We’re proud and excited to welcome Richard and Lucas to the Long Now Boston community.
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