Google DeepMind

Yesterday

The Spectator

Britain needs to get a grip on AI

From our UK edition

We remember the empty hysteria induced by warnings over the millennium bug. We have borne the burden of exaggerated predictions of climate apocalypse from scientists in the grip of confirmation bias. All too recently we endured lurid over-estimations from academics of what the final Covid variants might bring. So it is tempting to dismiss all future warnings of technological Götterdämmerung as the overwrought fever dreams of nerds who have read too much Isaac Asimov. Is artificial intelligence really going to take over the world and kill us all? Are we going to be frozen to death by our smart meters and then incinerated by our microwaves?

Thursday

James Ball

The end is nigh – or is it?

From our UK edition

When most people start screaming that the sky is falling, they can safely be ignored. But Eliezer Yudkowsky is not most people. He was one of the first to take the idea of superintelligent AI – artificial intelligence that greatly surpasses humanity – seriously. He played a role in introducing the founders of Google DeepMind to their first funder; and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, credited Yudkowsky as a man who was ‘critical in the decision’ to start the organisation. His influence goes still further – he was a key thinker motivating the effective altruism movement and its founders, and the wider rationalist movement to which they belonged.