Ask MIRI Anything (AMA)

Hi, all! The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) is answering questions here tomorrow, October 12 at 10am PDT. You can post questions below in the interim.

MIRI is a Berkeley-based research nonprofit that does basic research on key technical questions related to smarter-than-human artificial intelligence systems. Our research is largely aimed at developing a deeper and more formal understanding of such systems and their safety requirements, so that the research community is better-positioned to design systems that can be aligned with our interests. See here for more background.

Through the end of October, we’re running our 2016 fundraiser — our most ambitious funding drive to date. Part of the goal of this AMA is to address questions about our future plans and funding gap, but we’re also hoping to get very general questions about AI risk, very specialized questions about our technical work, and everything in between. Some of the biggest news at MIRI since Nate’s AMA here last year:

Likely participants in the AMA include:

Nate, Jessica, and Tsvi are also three of the co-authors of the “Logical Induction” paper.

EDIT (10:04am PDT): We’re here! Answers on the way!

EDIT (10:55pm PDT): Thanks for all the great questions! That’s all for now, though we’ll post a few more answers tomorrow to things we didn’t get to. If you’d like to support our AI safety work, our fundraiser will be continuing through the end of October.