How and why to use your career to make artificial intelligence safer

By · Published April 7th, 2016

AlphaGo

We’ve released a new ‘problem profile’ on the risks posed by artificial intelligence.

Many experts believe that there is a significant chance we’ll create artificially intelligent machines with abilities surpassing those of humans – superintelligence – sometime during this century. These advances could lead to extremely positive developments, but could also pose risks due to catastrophic accidents or misuse. The people working on this problem aim to maximise the chance of a positive outcome, while reducing the chance of catastrophe.

Work on the risks posed by superintelligent machines seems mostly neglected, with total funding for this research well under $10 million a year.

The main opportunity to deal with the problem is to conduct research in philosophy, computer science and mathematics aimed at keeping an AI’s actions and goals in alignment with human intentions, even if it were much more intelligent than us.

In the profile we cover:

  • The main reasons for and against thinking that the future risks posed by artificial intelligence are a highly pressing problem to work on.
  • How to use your career to reduce the risks posed by artificial intelligence.

Read our full profile on the risks posed by artificial intelligence.