A group of AI researchers, philosophers and technologists met at a $30m mansion in the US to discuss the end of humanity and the transition to posthumanism.
The topic of the event, organised by AI entrepreneur Daniel Faggella, was a contentious one, with critics arguing that the people developing AI are doing so without fully considering its consequences for humanity.
Faggella responded that talking about the potential downside of AI is now against the interests of big tech firms, which are competing to develop the technology.
The event featured talks on the future of intelligence and how human values might be impossible to translate to AI.
One speaker suggested the goal of AI development should not be to hard-code human preferences into future systems, but to build “AI that can seek out deeper, more universal values we haven’t yet discovered”, an approach he called “cosmic alignment”
Another speaker argued that if consciousness is “the home of value”, then building AI without fully understanding consciousness is a dangerous gamble, and that teaching both humans and machines to pursue ‘the good’ was a better goal than forcing AI to obey human commands forever.
