'Philosophy Today' Public Lecture Series 2024 | Dr. William Ratoff | 'How Should We Negotiate the Creation of Artificial General Intelligence?'
Dr. William Ratoff | Assistant Professor In Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
Artificial Intelligence is poised to revolutionize our lives. From self-driving cars to companion-bots, no aspect of our world, we envisage, will be quite the same again: robot warriors will one day fight our wars, and legions of worker-bots will enter the workforce, potentially leading to mass technological unemployment for humans. People may even enter into romantic relationships with their ideal robotic partners. Many computer scientists, philosophers, and futurists have now predicted that humanity will one day create artificial general intelligence: A.I. whose cognitive powers equal those of an adult human. Indeed, some have envisaged the occurrence of an A.I. singularity, an intelligence explosion which results in the creation of super-intelligent A.I., whose intellectual capacities far exceed our own.
How should we negotiate the creation of artificial general intelligence? Is the creation of such A.I. even desirable? Do they pose an existential risk to humanity? How do we ensure that such A.I. would be safe and share our values? What impact will they have on the labor-force? Should we try to stop their creation through legislation? Would it even be possible to stop their creation? What will our moral obligations to such beings be? Will thinking machines be morally significant beings? Or will we be free to use them as mere tools.
William Ratoff works on moral philosophy, especially topics in the ethics of artificial intelligence and new technologies, as well as the philosophy of mind. In this talk, he will outline the current philosophical lay of the land on these issues and attempt to provide some answers to the above questions.