Future of Life Institute Podcast

As technically challenging as it may be to develop safe and beneficial AI, this challenge also raises some thorny questions regarding ethics and morality, which are just as important to address before AI is too advanced. How do we teach machines to be moral when people can't even agree on what moral behavior is? And how do we help people deal with and benefit from the tremendous disruptive change that we anticipate from AI? To help consider these questions, Joshua Greene and Iyad Rawhan kindly agreed to join the podcast. Josh is a professor of psychology and member of the Center for Brain Science Faculty at Harvard University. Iyad is the AT&T Career Development Professor and an associate professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab.

If you want to improve the world as much as possible, what should you do with your career? Should you become a doctor, an engineer or a politician? Should you try to end global poverty, climate change, or international conflict? These are the questions that the research group, 80,000 Hours tries to answer. They try to figure out how individuals can set themselves up to help as many people as possible in as big a way as possible. To learn more about their research, Ariel invited Rob Wiblin and Brenton Mayer of 80,000 Hours to the FLI podcast. In this podcast we discuss "earning to give", building career capital, the most effective ways for individuals to help solve the world's most pressing problems -- including artificial intelligence, nuclear weapons, biotechnology and climate change. If you're interested in tackling these problems, or simply want to learn more about them, this podcast is the perfect place to start.

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. “It” is Max Tegmark's new book, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. In this interview, Ariel speaks with Max about the future of artificial intelligence. What will happen when machines surpass humans at every task? Will superhuman artificial intelligence arrive in our lifetime? Can and should it be controlled, and if so, by whom? Can humanity survive in the age of AI? And if so, how can we find meaning and purpose if super-intelligent machines provide for all our needs and make all our contributions superfluous?

How well can we predict the future? In this podcast, Ariel speaks with Anthony Aguirre and Andrew Critch about the art of predicting the future, what constitutes a good prediction, and how we can better predict the advancement of artificial intelligence. They also touch on the difference between predicting a solar eclipse and predicting the weather, what it takes to make money on the stock market, and the bystander effect regarding existential risks. Visit metaculus.com to try your hand at the art of predicting. Anthony is a professor of physics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He's one of the founders of the Future of Life Institute, of the Foundational Questions Institute, and most recently of Metaculus.com, which is an online effort to crowdsource predictions about the future of science and technology. Andrew is on a two-year leave of absence from MIRI to work with UC Berkeley's Center for Human Compatible AI. He cofounded the Center for Applied Rationality, and previously worked as an algorithmic stock trader at James Street Capital.

How does a weapon go from one of the most feared to being banned? And what happens once the weapon is finally banned? To discuss these questions, Ariel spoke with Miriam Struyk and Richard Moyes on the podcast this month. Miriam is Programs Director at PAX. She played a leading role in the campaign banning cluster munitions and developed global campaigns to prohibit financial investments in producers of cluster munitions and nuclear weapons. Richard is the Managing Director of Article 36. He's worked closely with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, he helped found the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, and he coined the phrase “meaningful human control” regarding autonomous weapons.

This is a special two-part podcast. First, Mark and Ariel discuss how AIs can use stories and creativity to understand and exhibit culture and ethics, while also gaining "common sense reasoning." They also discuss the “big red button” problem in AI safety research, the process of teaching "rationalization" to AIs, and computational creativity. Mark is an associate professor at the Georgia Tech School of interactive computing, where his recent work has focused on human-AI interaction and how humans and AI systems can understand each other. Then, we hear from scientists, politicians and concerned citizens about why they support the upcoming UN negotiations to ban nuclear weapons. Ariel interviewed a broad range of people over the past two months, and highlights are compiled here, including comments by Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Nobel Laureate Martin Chalfie, and FLI president Max Tegmark.

I recently visited the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO and met with climate scientists Dr. Kevin Trenberth and CU Boulder’s Dr. Brian Toon to have a different climate discussion: not about whether climate change is real, but about what it is, what its effects could be, and how can we prepare for the future.

The rise of artificial intelligence presents not only technical challenges, but important legal and ethical challenges for society, especially regarding machines like autonomous weapons and self-driving cars. To discuss these issues, I interviewed Matt Scherer and Ryan Jenkins. Matt is an attorney and legal scholar whose scholarship focuses on the intersection between law and artificial intelligence. Ryan is an assistant professor of philosophy and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Emerging Sciences group at California Polytechnic State, where he studies the ethics of technology. In this podcast, we discuss accountability and transparency with autonomous systems, government regulation vs. self-regulation, fake news, and the future of autonomous systems.

Last October, the United Nations passed a historic resolution to begin negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Previous nuclear treaties have included the Test Ban Treaty, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty. But in the 70 plus years of the United Nations, the countries have yet to agree on a treaty to completely ban nuclear weapons. The negotiations will begin this March. To discuss the importance of this event, I interviewed Beatrice Fihn and Susi Snyder. Beatrice is the Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, also known as ICAN, where she is leading a global campaign consisting of about 450 NGOs working together to prohibit nuclear weapons. Susi is the Nuclear Disarmament Program Manager for PAX in the Netherlands, and the principal author of the Don’t Bank on the Bomb series. She is an International Steering Group member of ICAN. (Edited by Tucker Davey.)

2016 saw some significant AI developments. To talk about the AI progress of the last year, we turned to Richard Mallah and Ian Goodfellow. Richard is the director of AI projects at FLI, he’s the Senior Advisor to multiple AI companies, and he created the highest-rated enterprise text analytics platform. Ian is a research scientist at OpenAI, he’s the lead author of a deep learning textbook, and he’s the inventor of Generative Adversarial Networks. Listen to the podcast here or review the transcript here.

FLI's founders and core team -- Max Tegmark, Meia Chita-Tegmark, Anthony Aguirre, Victoria Krakovna, Richard Mallah, Lucas Perry, David Stanley, and Ariel Conn -- discuss the developments of 2016 they were most excited about, as well as why they're looking forward to 2017.

Drs. Heather Roff and Peter Asaro, two experts in autonomous weapons, talk about their work to understand and define the role of autonomous weapons, the problems with autonomous weapons, and why the ethical issues surrounding autonomous weapons are so much more complicated than other AI systems.

I recently sat down with Meteorologist Alan Robock from Rutgers University and physicist Brian Toon from the University of Colorado to discuss what is potentially the most devastating consequence of nuclear war: nuclear winter.

Dr. Robin Hanson talks about the Age of Em, the future and evolution of humanity, and his research for his next book.

In this podcast interview, Lucas and Ariel discuss the concepts of nuclear deterrence, hair trigger alert, the potential consequences of nuclear war, and how individuals can do their part to lower the risks of nuclear catastrophe.

Interview with Dario Amodei of OpenAI and Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute about studying short-term vs. long-term risks of AI, plus lots of discussion about Amodei's recent paper, Concrete Problems in AI Safety.

Could an earthquake become an existential or catastrophic risk that puts all of humanity at risk? Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute and Ariel Conn of the Future of Life Institute consider extreme earthquake scenarios to figure out if such a risk is plausible. Featuring seismologist Martin Chapman of Virginia Tech. (Edit: This was just for fun, in a similar vein to MythBusters. We wanted to see just how far we could go.)

nuclear_interview_David_Wright by Future of Life Institute

An interview with Seth Baum, Executive Director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, about whether the Paris Climate Agreement can be considered a success.