What are the ideas driving the pursuit of human-level AI? In the penultimate episode of this Tech Tonic series, hosts Madhumita Murgia and John Thornhill look at some of the futuristic objectives that are at the centre of the AI industry’s quest for superintelligence and hear about the Extropians, a surprisingly influential group of futurists from the early 1990s. Anders Sandberg, senior research fellow at Oxford university's Future of Humanity Institute, sets out some of the ideas developed in the Extropians mailing list while Connor Leahy, co-founder of Conjecture and Timnit Gebru, founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) explain why they worry about the Extropians’ continued influence today.
Free links:
OpenAI and the rift at the heart of Silicon Valley
We need to examine the beliefs of today’s tech luminaries
OpenAI’s secrecy imperils public trust
Big tech companies cut AI ethics staff, raising safety concerns
Tech Tonic is presented by Madhumita Murgia and John Thornhill. Senior producer is Edwin Lane and the producer is Josh Gabert-Doyon. Executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Sound design by Breen Turner and Samantha Giovinco. Original music by Metaphor Music. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley.
Clips: Alcor Cryonics
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Tim Wu on addictive apps
The graphics chip powering AI technology
Silicon Valley's newest recruits
The limits of artificial intelligence
Using blockchain to fight fraud
Uber's plans for aviation on demand
How US companies find the right talent
What's next for Stripe and online payments
What self-driving cars could do for robotics
How DeepMind vanquished Go
Engineering your own chatbot
Political disruption and the internet
The virtue of cash
A look inside Uber
Science and security
Cracking the ed-tech market
Coding for everyone
Sharing the cost of driving
The future of work
When machines outsmart their human designers
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
FT News Briefing
Money Clinic with Claer Barrett
FT World Weekly
FT News in Focus
FT Banking Weekly