What's worrying Elon Musk? Existential Risk and Artificial Intelligence

The talk will be given in English.

Schedule

17:45-18:15 - Gathering & Snacks

18:15-19:45 - Lecture and Q&A

About the speaker

Dr. Joshua Fox (http://joshuafox.com/) served as a Research Associate with the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. He published on AI X-Risk in peer-reviewed journals, and also wrote the world's first popular-science magazine article on the topic (in Israel's Galileo!)

Abstract

Elon Musk said: “With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon. In all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water, it’s like – yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon. Doesn’t work out." The understanding of the risk to the human future posed by artificial intelligence is spreading: Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Sam Altman, president of YCombinator, recently came out with similar opinions.

This talk will explain:

• Why you should be concerned about existential risk to humanity.

• Why self-improving artificial superintelligence is a leading X-Risk.

• Which people and organizations working on the issue today.

• Promising (and fascinating) research directions which may help deal with the risk. These include decision theories, which, unlike previous approaches, allow the AI to reason about itself.