{"id":3488,"date":"2017-02-20T22:49:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T22:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3488"},"modified":"2017-02-20T22:49:26","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T22:49:26","slug":"will-ai-destroy-the-human-race-a-debate-at-the-arts-club","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3488","title":{"rendered":"Will AI destroy the human race? A debate at The Arts Club"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/140407581\" width=\"450\" height=\"253\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<small><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/140407581\">The Arts Club Debating Society &#8211; Robots Will Destroy The Human Race<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/user21317862\">The Arts Club<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/small><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/commissioning\/news\/articles\/new-appointment-commissioning-editor-for-science-natural-history\">Aidan Laverty<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mpshanahan\">Murray Shanahan<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/IanYorston\">Ian Yorston<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/zarkadakis\">George Zarkadakis<\/a>, and me. <\/p>\n<p>This was a weird evening. <\/p>\n<p><!--more-->I never got involved with debating societies at school or Uni (maybe I should have?) and the debate format isn&#8217;t one that I have any experience with. <\/p>\n<p>That didn&#8217;t help. <\/p>\n<p>Plus, I was asked to make the case for the &#8220;For&#8221; side &#8211; that is, that AI does pose an existential threat to humanity. <\/p>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t really my view point. I do think there are risks, as there are with the application of any new technology. I absolutely think we need to be careful. And I think initiatives like <a href=\"https:\/\/openai.com\/\">OpenAI<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.partnershiponai.org\/\">Partnership on AI<\/a> are important efforts to guide where this stuff goes. <\/p>\n<p>But I don&#8217;t completely share the &#8220;we&#8217;re all doomed&#8221; mindset. <\/p>\n<p>I still like Andrew Ng&#8217;s quote from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/brandlab\/2015\/05\/andrew-ng-deep-learning-mandate-humans-not-just-machines\/\">a 2015 Wired interview<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The reason I say that I don&#8217;t worry about AI turning evil is the same reason I don&#8217;t worry about overpopulation on Mars.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The debate format they were after for this evening wasn&#8217;t really four people all giving a balanced &#8220;there are risks, but there are things we can do and we probably have time&#8221; view. They wanted two people to present the &#8220;we&#8217;re doomed!&#8221; side of the story, while another two people presented the &#8220;there&#8217;s no risks, it&#8217;s all completely safe&#8221; side. <\/p>\n<p>The idea was a, perhaps somewhat contrived, way to present an introduction to the arguments to an audience that isn&#8217;t familiar with the current state of technology. <\/p>\n<p>So I wasn&#8217;t quite sure what I was doing, and I was arguing a point of view I don&#8217;t really share. But\u2026 try everything once, right? And it was a chance to share a stage with some people whose work I greatly admire (seriously, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Technological-Singularity-Press-Essential-Knowledge\/dp\/0262527804\">The Technological Singularity<\/a>  is a great book &#8211; go read it). <\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s how I ended up on that stage for a very weird evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Arts Club Debating Society &#8211; Robots Will Destroy The Human Race from The Arts Club on Vimeo. Aidan Laverty, Murray Shanahan, Ian Yorston, George Zarkadakis, and me. This was a weird evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}