My personal cruxes for working on AI safety

Abstract

It’s great to be here. I used to hang out at Stanford a lot, fun fact. I moved to America six years ago, and then in 2015, I came to Stanford EA every Sunday, and there was, obviously, a totally different crop of people there. It was really fun. I think we were a lot less successful than the current Stanford EA iteration at attracting new people. We just liked having weird conversations about weird stuff every week. It was really fun, but it’s really great to come back and see a Stanford EA which is shaped differently. Today I’m going to be talking about the argument for working on AI safety that compels me to work on AI safety, rather than the argument that should compel you or anyone else. I’m going to try to spell out how the arguments are actually shaped in my head. Logistically, we’re going to try to talk for about an hour with a bunch of back and forth and you guys arguing with me as we go. And at the end, I’m going to do miscellaneous Q and A for questions you might have. And I’ll probably make everyone stand up and sit down again because it’s unreasonable to sit in the same place for 90 minutes.