the real risk with AGI isn’t malice but competence. A superintelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble. As I mentioned in chapter 1, people don’t think twice about flooding anthills to build hydroelectric dams, so let’s not place humanity in the position of those ants.

There are three things that I think are important:
Truth, curiosity, and beauty.

If AI cares about those three things, it will care about us.

Truth will prevent AI from going insane.
Curiosity will foster humanity.
And if it has a sense of beauty, it will be a great future.

There are three things that I think are important:
Truth, curiosity, and beauty.

If AI cares about those three things, it will care about us.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be misused, or it can be used by bad actors. So then, there are questions about how you govern the use of this technology globally. How do you govern the use of AI in a way that is aligned with human values?

Once artificial intelligence matches our own, won’t they then design even better ai minds? Then better still, with accelerating pace? At worst, might they decide (as in many cheap dramas), to eliminate their irksome masters? At best, won’t we suffer the shame of being nostalgically tolerated? Like senile grandparents or beloved childhood pets?

On the one hand, AI is capable of performing superhuman work.

On the other hand, AI is becoming a synonym for fake.

This is another example of how the Internet increases variance.

AI is the best researcher and the worst spammer, at the same time.

We will have something that is, for the first time smarter than the smartest human. It's hard to say exactly what that moment is, but there will come a point where no job is needed. You can have a job if you wanted to have a job for personal satisfaction. But the AI would be able to do everything. I don't know if that makes people comfortable or uncomfortable. If you wish for a magic genie, that gives you any wish you want, and there's no limit. You don't have those three wish limits nonsense, it's both good and bad. One of the challenges in the future will be how do we find meaning in life.

“This will be most crucial in artificial intelligence. Right now it is dominated by a homogenous group of people. The biggest thing to watch out for in AI is bias, how it was trained and what we ask it to do. Not because they are bad, but because they have a different perspective.

AI researchers, scientists and students must consider issues ranging from security, privacy and accountability to diversity, equity and inclusion. They need to ask questions about climate and culture alongside questions about ones and zeros.

Do we make sure AI is a tool that has proper safeguards as it gets really powerful? (November 23, 2023)

‘In from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being. I mean a machine that will be able to read Shakespeare, grease a car, play office politics, tell a joke, have a fight. At that point the machine will begin to educate itself with fantastic speed. In a few months it will be at genius level and a few months after that its powers will be incalculable... Once the computers got control, we might never get it back. We would survive at their sufferance. If we're lucky, they might decide to keep us as pets... I have warned [people in the Pentagon] again and again that we are getting into very dangerous country. They don’t seem to understand.

Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families, and our very democracy from the abuse of power. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is the most consequential technology of our time — perhaps of all time. Nothing offers more profound possibilities and risks for our economy and our security, our society, our very — for humanity. Artificial intelligence even has the potential to help us answer my call to end cancer as we know it. But unless safeguards are in place, AI could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work, and how we protect our nation. We must make sure AI is safe and trustworthy and good for all humankind. In the age of AI, it's more important than ever that the people must govern. And as the land of liberty, America — not China — must lead the world on the development of AI. You know, in the years ahead, it will help to be — it's going to be up to the president, the presidency, the Congress, the courts, the free press, and the American people to confront these powerful forces.

If a superior alien civilisation sent us a text message saying, 'We'll arrive in a few decades', would we just reply, 'OK, call us when you get here, we'll leave the lights on'? Probably not, but this is more or less what has happened with AI.

What bothers me is that there will be people in the future who see him as an example and they’ll be affected in some way, but they’ll be a lot smarter and have many more colours to their personality and be more mercurial and become someone with the same values as he has but able to get much further and do more damage as a despot. That’s my worry. There are people who look up to him: ‘I want to be like him.’ But they’ll do it much better and they’ll be more smart about it.