AI: What If We Succeed?

Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

1155 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL

This event is free and open to the public. A livestream of this event will be available via Zoom.

Stuart Russell is Professor (and formerly Chair) of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and holder of the Smith-Zadeh Chair in Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is co-chair of the World Economic Forum Council on AI and the OECD Expert Group on AI Futures, and he is a US representative to the Global Partnership on AI. His research covers a wide range of topics in artificial intelligence including machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, real-time decision making, multi-target tracking, computer vision, computational

The media are agog with claims that recent advances in AI put artificial general intelligence (AGI) within reach. Is this true? If so, is that a good thing? Alan Turing predicted that AGI would result in the machines taking control. At this lecture, Stuart Russell will argue that Turing was right to express concern but wrong to think that doom is inevitable. Instead, we need to develop a new kind of AI that is provably beneficial to humans. Unfortunately, we are heading in the opposite direction.

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The Roman Family Director’s Lecture series at the Neubauer Collegium, made possible through the generous support of University of Chicago Trustee Emmanuel Roman, MBA’87, brings distinguished speakers to campus to share their insights with faculty, students, and the broader community. The aim of these events is to deepen public knowledge about the world and humanity’s place in it.

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