Existential risk of AI

Existential risk of AI

Author: Helen and Dave Edwards July 15, 2023 Duration: 32:37

ChatGPT, Dall-e, Midjourney, Bard, and Bing are here. Many others are coming. At every dinner conversation, classroom lesson, and business meeting people are talking about AI. There are some big questions that now everyone is seeking answers for, not just the philosophers, ethicists, researchers, and venture folks. It’s noisy, complicated, technical and often agenda-driven.

In this episode, we tackle the question of existential risk. Will AI kill us all?

We start by talking about why this question is important at all. And why we are finally tackling it ourselves (since we’ve largely avoided it for quite some time). We talk about the scenarios that people are worried about and the three premises that underly this risk:

* We will build an intelligence that will outsmart us

* We will not be able to control it

* It will do things we don’t want it to

Join us as we talk about the risk that AI might end humanity. And, if you’d like to dig deeper, subscribe to Artificiality at https://artificiality.substack.com to get all of our content on this topic including our weekly essay, a gallery of AI images, book recommendations, and more. (Note: the essay will be emailed to subscribers a couple of days after this podcast first airs—thanks for your patience!).

About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards:

Artificiality is a research and services business founded in 2019 to help people make sense of artificial intelligence and complex change. Our weekly publication provides thought-provoking ideas, science reviews, and market research and our monthly research releases provides leaders with actionable intelligence and insights for applying AI in their organizations. We provide research-based and expert-led AI strategy and complex change management services to organizations around the world.

We are artificial philosophers and meta-researchers who aim to make the philosophical more practical and the practical more philosophical. We believe that understanding AI requires synthesizing research across disciplines: behavioral economics, cognitive science, complexity science, computer science, decision science, design, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. We are dedicated to unraveling the profound impact of AI on our society, communities, workplaces, and personal lives. 

Subscribe for free at https://www.artificiality.world.

If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds.

Learn more about ⁠⁠Sonder Studio⁠⁠

Subscribe to get ⁠⁠Artificiality⁠⁠ delivered to your email

Learn about our book ⁠⁠Make Better Decisions⁠⁠ and buy it on ⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠

Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world.

#ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai 



Hosted by Helen and Dave Edwards, Stay Human, from the Artificiality Institute is a conversation that lives in the messy, human space between our tools and our selves. Each episode digs into the subtle ways artificial intelligence is reshaping our daily decisions, our creative impulses, and even our sense of identity. This isn't a technical manual or a series of futuristic predictions; it's a grounded exploration of how we maintain our agency in a world increasingly mediated by algorithms. The podcast operates from a core belief: that our engagement with AI should be about more than just safety or efficiency-it needs to be meaningful and worthwhile. You'll hear discussions rooted in story-based research, where complex ideas about cognition and ethics are unpacked through relatable narratives and real-world examples. The goal is to provide a framework for thoughtful choice, helping each of us consciously design the relationship we want with the machines in our lives. Tuning in offers a chance to step back from the hype and consider how we can actively remain the authors of our own minds, preserving what makes us uniquely human even as the technology evolves. It's an essential listen for anyone curious about the personal and philosophical dimensions of our digital age.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Stay Human, from the Artificiality Institute
Podcast Episodes
Steven Sloman: LLMs and Deliberative Reasoning [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:06
If you’ve used a large language model, you’ve likely had one or more moments of amazement as the tool immediately responded with impressive content from its massive data cosmos training set. But you’ve likely also had mo…
Julia Rhodes Davis: Advancing Racial Equity [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:39
In this episode, we speak with Julia Rhodes Davis, a Senior Advisor at Data & Society, about her recent report "Advancing Racial Equity Through Technology Policy" published by the AI Now Institute. This comprehensive rep…
Alicia Juarrero: Context Changes Everything [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:50
Grounding her work in the problem of causation, Alicia Juarrero challenges previously held beliefs that only forceful impacts are causes. Constraints, she claims, bring about effects as well, and they enable the emergenc…
Jai Vipra: Computational Power and AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:17
Jai Vipra is a research fellow at the AI Now Institute where she focuses on competition issues in frontier AI models. She recently published the report Computational Power and AI which focuses on compute as a core depend…
Wendy Wong: We, the Data, and Human Rights [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:40
Wendy Wong is a professor of political science and principal’s research chair at the University of British Columbia where she researches and teaches about the governance of emerging technologies, human rights, and civil…
Chris Summerfield: Natural General Intelligence [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:53
Chris Summerfield is a Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Oxford. His work is concerned with understanding how humans learn and make decisions. He is interested in how humans acquire new concepts or patt…
Michael Bungay Stanier: How to Work with (Almost) Anyone [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:02
Michael Bungay Stanier has an extraordinary talent for distilling the complexity of human relationships into easy to remember and follow frameworks—doing so with just the right amount of Australian humor and plenty of vu…
Synthesis & Generative AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:21
An exploration of how we might conceptualize the design of AGI within the context of human left and right brains. The tension between AI and human functioning highlights unique cooperation. AI uses language, abstraction,…
Jonathan Coulton: Generative AI, songwriting, and creativity [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:37
If you’ve read our show notes, you’ll know that our music was written and performed by Jonathan Coulton. I’ve known Jonathan for more than 30 years, dating back to when we sang together in college. But that’s a story for…
Is it possible for AI to be meaningful? [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:30
An exploration of the intersection of AI, meaning, and human relationships. In this episode, we dive deep into the role of AI in our lives and how it can influence our perception of meaning. We explore how AI, and specif…