Some of the greatest scientists and inventors of the future are sitting in high school classrooms right now, breezing through calculus and eagerly awaiting freshman year at the world’s top universities. They may have already won Math Olympiads or invented clever, new internet applications. We know these students are smart, but are they prepared to […]
Earlier this month, the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons (UN CCW) Group of Governmental Experts met in Geneva to discuss the future of lethal autonomous weapons systems. But before we get to that, here’s a quick recap of everything that’s happened in the last six months. Since its release in November 2017, the […]
When training image detectors, AI researchers can’t replicate the real world. They teach systems what to expect by feeding them training data, such as photographs, computer-generated images, real video and simulated video, but these practice environments can never capture the messiness of the physical world. In machine learning (ML), image detectors learn to spot objects […]
Artificial intelligence poses a myriad of risks to humanity. From privacy concerns, to algorithmic bias and “black box” decision making, to broader questions of value alignment, recursive self-improvement, and existential risk from superintelligence — there’s no shortage of AI safety issues. AI safety research aims to address all of these concerns. But with limited […]
Scientists know that the planet is warming, that humans are causing it, and that we’re running out of time to avoid catastrophic climate change. But at the same time, their estimates for future global warming can seem frustratingly vague — best-case scenarios allow decades to solve the energy crisis, while worst-case scenarios seem utterly hopeless, […]
On Thursday, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists inched their iconic Doomsday Clock forward another thirty seconds. It is now two minutes to midnight. Citing the growing threats of climate change, increasing tensions between nuclear-armed countries, and a general loss of trust in government institutions, the Bulletin warned that we are “making the world security situation […]
[beginning of recorded material] Ariel: I’m Ariel Conn with the Future of Life Institute. Whenever people ask me what FLI does, I explain that we try to mitigate existential risks. That is, we’re basically trying to make sure that society doesn’t accidentally kill itself with technology. Almost to a person, the response is, “Oh, I’m […]
In 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences penned the “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity.” Pointing to growing problems like ocean dead zones, biodiversity destruction, climate change, and continued human population growth, the scientists argued that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the […]
[beginning of recorded material] Ariel: I’m Ariel Conn with the Future of Life Institute. As most of our listeners will know, we are especially concerned with ensuring AI is developed safely and beneficially. But as technically challenging as that may be, it also raises some thorny questions regarding ethics and morality, which are just as […]
Click here to see this page in other languages: Russian London, UK – On October 27, 1962, a soft-spoken naval officer named Vasili Arkhipov single-handedly prevented nuclear war during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Arkhipov’s submarine captain, thinking their sub was under attack by American forces, wanted to launch a nuclear weapon at […]
[beginning of recorded material] Ariel: I’m Ariel Conn with the Future of Life Institute. The world is full of problems but each of us has only so much time available to make it better. If you wanted to improve the world as much as possible, what would you do with your career? Should you become […]
Machine learning systems are confusing – just ask any AI researcher. Their deep neural networks operate incredibly quickly, considering thousands of possibilities in seconds before making decisions. The human brain simply can’t keep up. When people learn to play Go, instructors can challenge their decisions and hear their explanations. Through this interaction, teachers determine the […]
[beginning of recorded material] Ariel: Elon Musk has called it a compelling guide to the challenges and choices in our quest for a great future of life on Earth and beyond, while Stephen Hawking and Ray Kurzweil have referred to it as an introduction and guide to the most important conversation of our time. I’m […]
As artificial intelligence becomes more advanced, programmers will expect to talk to computers like they talk to humans. Instead of typing out long, complex code, we’ll communicate with AI systems using natural language. With a current model called “program synthesis,” humans can get computers to write code for them by giving them examples and demonstrations […]
AI promises a smarter world – a world where finance algorithms analyze data better than humans, self-driving cars save millions of lives from accidents, and medical robots eradicate disease. But machines aren’t perfect. Whether an automated trading agent buys the wrong stock, a self-driving car hits a pedestrian, or a medical robot misses a cancerous […]
The million-dollar question in AI circles is: When? When will artificial intelligence become so smart and capable that it surpasses human beings at every task? AI is already visible in the world through job automation, algorithmic financial trading, self-driving cars and household assistants like Alexa, but these developments are trivial compared to the idea of […]
“The future of work is now,” says Moshe Vardi. “The impact of technology on labor has become clearer and clearer by the day.” Machines have already automated millions of routine, working-class jobs in manufacturing. And now, AI is learning to automate non-routine jobs in transportation and logistics, legal writing, financial services, administrative support, and healthcare. […]
[beginning of recorded material] Barbara Lee: My name is Congresswoman Barbara Lee, I represent the 13th Congressional District of California. I support a ban on nuclear weapons because I know that a nuclear bomb is an equal opportunity destroyer. It will annihilate the world, and so we must ban nuclear weapons. Ariel: And I’m Ariel Conn with […]
[beginning of recorded material] Conn: I’m Ariel Conn with the Future of Life Institute. With April hosting Earth Day, the March for Science, and the People’s Climate March, it seemed like a natural month to focus on climate change for our podcast. I’m also a resident of Boulder, Colorado, which means today I have the […]