Power-Seeking AI and X-risk Mitigation (AI Alignment Speaker Series)

Talk by Joseph Carlsmith, Open Philanthropy

About this talk

A number of leading AI researchers have raised concerns about the existential risk posed by advanced AI, including Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley), Francesca Rossi (IBM), Shane Legg (DeepMind), and Eric Horvitz (Microsoft). In his report “Is power-seeking AI an existential risk?”, Joseph Carlsmith critically examines the case that AI poses an existential risk and attempts to estimate the level of risk, focusing on AI with advanced capability, agentic planning, and strategic awareness. In this talk, Joseph will discuss topics such as when and whether we should expect humans to build AI with these capabilities, the incentives for and against doing so, and the difficulties of aligning AI to human values.

About the speaker

Joseph Carlsmith is a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy and a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Oxford.

About the speaker series

With the advancement of Machine Learning research and the expected appearance of Artificial General Intelligence in the near future, it becomes an extremely important problem to positively shape the development of AI and to align AI values to that of human values.

In this speaker series, we bring state-of-art research on AI alignment into focus for audiences interested in contributing to this field. We will kick off the series by closely examining the potential risks engendered by AGIs and making the case for prioritizing the mitigation of risks now. Later on in the series, we will hear about more technical talks on concrete proposals for AI alignment.

See the full schedule and register at https://www.harvardea.org/agathon.

You can participate in the talks in person at Harvard and MIT, as well as remotely through the webinar by registering ahead of time (link above). All talks happen at 5 pm EST (2 pm PST, 10 pm GMT) on Thursdays. Dinner is provided for in-person venues.