THE POD BAY DOORS

We all want the AI that creeps into our lives to be ‘safe’. We use that word a lot. But what exactly does it mean, in this context? What does ‘safe’ AI look like? From a risk management standpoint, it’s informative to answer the question of ‘safe’ AI by starting with what un-safe AI looks like. That’s discouragingly easy to do, even this early on. Let’s see how close this list comes. AI that isn’t aligned with human well-being is unsafe AI. If an AI’s goals conflict with hu

The great fear of AI – voiced by millions, and in particular the two youngest generations – is that AI is here to replace us. That’s not an unreasonable fear, in a social media climate where so many (including more than a few actual industry players) are hell-bent on doomposting exactly that message, day in and out. It’s certainly true that there’s a vast population of capitalists out there who would be quite pleased to cut their workforces by 90% or more. Well, they’re capit

We’ve been well-prepped for maleficent AI by our movies, TV and books for decades now (HAL 9000, Skynet, the Cylons), but we’ve seen enough of the real thing to understand that evil AI in the here-and-now is, well, hovering in the wings. A real thing. A thing to take seriously. We can easily see what that can mean, and it now becomes our task to decide what we can do about it. The first step is figuring out what “good” and “evil” are, in AI terms, and what options we have in