I am unabashedly a technology optimist. For me, however, that means making choices for how we will get the best out of technology for the good of humanity, while limiting its negative effects. With technology becoming ever more powerful there is a huge premium on getting this right as the downsides now include existential risk. Let me state upfront that I am super excited about progress in AI and what it can eventually do for humanity if we get this right. We could be building the capacity to...

I am unabashedly a technology optimist. For me, however, that means making choices for how we will get the best out of technology for the good of humanity, while limiting its negative effects. With technology becoming ever more powerful there is a huge premium on getting this right as the downsides now include existential risk. Let me state upfront that I am super excited about progress in AI and what it can eventually do for humanity if we get this right. We could be building the capacity to...

Now we are getting to the biggest and weirdest risk of AI: a super intelligence emerging and wiping out humanity in pursuit of its own goals. To a lot of people this seems like a totally absurd idea, held only by a tiny fringe of people who appear weird and borderline culty. It seems so far out there and also so huge that most people wind up dismissing it and/or forgetting about shortly after hearing it. There is a big similarity here to the climate crisis, where the more extreme views are wi...

Now we are getting to the biggest and weirdest risk of AI: a super intelligence emerging and wiping out humanity in pursuit of its own goals. To a lot of people this seems like a totally absurd idea, held only by a tiny fringe of people who appear weird and borderline culty. It seems so far out there and also so huge that most people wind up dismissing it and/or forgetting about shortly after hearing it. There is a big similarity here to the climate crisis, where the more extreme views are wi...

A few week backs I wrote a series of blog posts about the risks from progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI). I specifically addressed that I believe that we are facing not just structural risks, such as algorithmic bias, but also existential ones. There are three dilemmas in pushing the existential risk point at this moment. First, there is the potential for a “boy who cried wolf” effect. The more we push right now, if (hopefully) nothing terrible happens, then the harder existential risk f...

A few week backs I wrote a series of blog posts about the risks from progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI). I specifically addressed that I believe that we are facing not just structural risks, such as algorithmic bias, but also existential ones. There are three dilemmas in pushing the existential risk point at this moment. First, there is the potential for a “boy who cried wolf” effect. The more we push right now, if (hopefully) nothing terrible happens, then the harder existential risk f...