Containing the intelligence explosion

This is a joint event with the Oxford Martin School and the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology

Dr Joanna Bryson, Reader, Department of Computer Science, University of Bath, will ask is artificial intelligence an existential threat to humanity? If so when?

In this talk she will argue that what Dewey, Goertzel and others have described as an intelligence explosion is an accurate description of the impact the socio-technical system of humanity and its culture has had on this planet since the dawn of writing, arguably the first form of AI. This pattern is accelerating with new communication and computation technology creating an ever-more powerful and dynamic system.

Nevertheless, understanding this system is not necessarily beyond the capacity or remit of theoretical biology. Further, she will suggest that controlling the system may be possible by altering the moral agents that compose it, that is, by providing useful abstractions to the general population and/or policy makers. The EPSRC Principles of Robotics (possibly the only national-level general-purpose AI ethics policy statement, although presently completely non-binding) calls this process “transparency” and mandates it.