BRSL Events

AI Safety is now a common term, used in a variety of regulatory, education and funding contexts. However, most formulations of ‘AI safety’ fail to capture a coherent picture of the socio-technical nature of AI systems, simultaneously under-estimating and over-estimating certain risks and impacts. In this talk, Deborah Raji will share the perspective of those hoping to adopt this socio-technical view, and the implications for AI development, adoption and policymaking.

Deborah Raji, UC Berkeley Researcher.

PauseAI co-founder and Dr. of Evolutionary Biology Holly Elmore will lay out her deep worldview on genetic conflict, human society, and social change and explains how that is cashed out in PauseAI’s theory of change. PauseAI is for anyone who wants to pause AI development (and pledges nonviolence!). But PauseAI was organized according to the idea that the real AI danger isn’t simply a technical issue awaiting a bugfix. The problem is that we are developing machines of arbitrary intelligence. Arbitrary intelligence is arbitrary power, and the existence of such power will disrupt many societal equilibria, some we anticipate and who knows how many that we may not even be aware of. It may take many years to bring human society to the point where we can coexist comfortably with advanced AI, or human society may be fundamentally incompatible with superhuman AI. Whatever we do about advancing AI as a society must take all of these possibilities into account.

Holly Elmore, co-founder and Dr. of Evolutionary Biology at PauseAI.