Benjamin Todd

Artificial intelligence.

Billions of dollars are spent trying to make artificial intelligence more powerful, but hardly any effort is devoted to making sure that those added capabilities are implemented safely and for the benefit of humanity.

This matters for two main reasons.

First, powerful AI systems have the potential to be misused.

For instance, they might be used to develop dangerous new technology, such as new and more powerful weapons.

Second, there is a risk of accidents when powerful new AI systems are deployed.

This is especially pressing due to the alignment problem.

This is a complex topic, so if you want to explore it properly, we recommend reading our full problem profile on artificial intelligence, found at adk.info.ai.

But here's a quick introduction.

In the 1980s, chess was held up as an example of something a machine could never do.

But in 1997, world chess champion Garry Kasparov was defeated by the computer program Deep Blue.

Since then, computers have become far better at chess than humans.

In 2004, two experts in artificial intelligence used truck driving as an example of a job that would be really hard to automate.

But today, self-driving cars are already on the road.

In August 2021, a team of expert forecasters predicted that it would take five years for a computer to be able to solve high school competition-level maths problems.

Less than a year later, Google built an AI that could do just that.

At the end of 2022, ChatGPT became the fastest-growing web platform ever.

The most recent of these advances are possible due to progress in machine learning.

In the past, we mostly had to give computers detailed instructions for every task.

Today, we have programs that teach themselves.