Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg and Stuart Armstrong to speak in Oxford and Pilsen
1. Sunday 4th: Nick Bostrom speaks about Existential Risk at TedX Oxford, 2:30pm
2. Tuesday 6th Stuart Armstrong speaks at “Beyond AI” conference in Pilsen on “Predicting AI – or failing to”
“When will we have proper AI? The literature is full of answers to this question, as confident as they are contradictory. I analyse these prediction from a theoretical standpoint (should we even expect anyone to have good AI predictions at all?) and a practical one (do the predictions made look as if they have good information behind them?). I conclude that we should not put our trust in timeline predictions, but that some philosophical predictions seem surprisingly effective – but that in all cases, we should increase our uncertainties and our error bars. If someone predicts the arrival of AI at some date with great confidence, we have every reason to think they’re completely wrong.”
3. Wednesday 7th Anders Sandberg speaks to the Oxford Transhumanists about “Alien intelligence, Existential Risks and the Limits of Technology”
https://www.facebook.com/events/477352175638740/
“The Fermi question "Where are they?" is one of those deceptively simple questions that have ramifications far beyond the obvious topic. It deals with the discrepancy between the enormous number of planetary systems where life might have emerged and the noticeable lack of alien intelligence, and the vast difference between astronomical timescales and the timescale needed for intelligent life to colonize large volumes of the universe. This means that it is not just a question about alien life, but about the limits of technology, long-term species survival, how to think in conditions of extreme ignorance, and our place in the universe. It turns out that most potential answers to the question have surprisingly radical implications.”