Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology, provide an incisive introduction to the promise and the threat of AI in this presentation from May 2023: The AI Dilemma.
The AI dilemma arises from the rapid advances in artificial intelligence. While these advances have the potential to benefit humanity, there is also a risk that creating an intelligence smarter than humans, which is not aligned with our goals, could lead to existential risks. Researchers warn that if we don't coordinate and align AI development with human values, it could result in tragedy. Integrating different logics of power -- including engineering, social justice, corporate, and government logic -- is crucial for ensuring that AI benefits humanity.
Yuri Noah Harari
Further to THI's introduction to AI is this 40-minute presentation by Israeli Professor Yuri Noah Harari, author of Sapiens. He drills deep into AI’s potential effect on humanity, in Montreux, Switzerland on April 23, 2023. “AI has hacked the operating system of human civilization: language.”
TED Vancouver
Also, from an extensive TED presentation (July 19, 2023) in Vancouver, B.C., this superb report explores the potential and challenge of artificial intelligence, from every perspective, within most every discipline: https://mcusercontent.com/07487d1456302a286cf9c4ccc/files/2a77bc00-5c2a-e7dd-bc5f-97a235b5ad3d/TED_Tech_AI_report.01.pdf.
Foreign Affairs
And this lead essay in the Fall 2023 issue of Foreign Affairs alerts us to the danger of AI being at the control of technolgists, not governments, and moving too fast for us to rescue necessary oversight and technoauthentication (!): https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/artificial-intelligence-power-paradox.
Nick Bilton
Also, as a bonus piece, American journalist Nick Bilton – with elegance and urgency – writes in Vanity Fair, October 2023...
(https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2023/10/1/future-tense)
...about the “…new machine that is made of billions of microscopic transistors and aluminum and copper wires that zigzag and twist and turn and are interconnected in incomprehensible ways…A little tiny machine that may end up being the last invention humans ever create.”
“And whether we understand what it is they are doing or not, we are largely left to the whims of their creation. We don’t have a say in the ethics behind their invention. We don’t have a say over whether it should even exist in the first place. ‘We’re creating God,’ one AI engineer working on large language models (LLMs) recently told me. ‘We’re creating conscious machines.'”
Five best books on AI
Finally, here are the five best books on AI (as of February 2024), according to The New York Times: www.nytimes.com/2024/01/31/books/review/artificial-intelligence-best-books.html?searchResultPosition=3.
