Ep. 52 - AI Ethics and Social Reform with Nell Watson
In this installment of the Future Grind podcast host Ryan O’Shea speaks with Nell Watson, an entrepreneur and machine intelligence researcher whose work primarily focuses on protecting human rights and creating ethical AI. She currently serves as AI Faculty at Singularity University and works with the IEEE on AI initiatives. She also chairs EthicsNet.org, which crowdsources datasets to teach pro-social behaviors to machines, and CulturalPeace.org, which seeks to craft Geneva Conventions-style rules for cultural conflict. Nell serves as Senior Scientific Advisor to The Future Society at Harvard, and holds Fellowships from the British Computing Society, and Royal Statistical Society, among others.
They discuss AI value alignment, the role for humans in AI, rules of engagement for the culture wars, the COVID-19 pandemic, and much more.
Both Nell and Ryan are going to be speaking at the Humanity Plus Post-Pandemic summit on July 7th and 8th, 2020. This free digital event will be themed around A Future Free of Disease and Destruction, and they’ll be joined by some of the leading figures in futurism and transhumanism including Dr. Ben Goertzel, Dr. Max More, Dr. Natasha Vita-More, Dr. Anders Sandberg, and more. You can register here.
And we have a special announcement - we plan to send an episode of the Future Grind podcast to the Moon on board Astrobotic’s first mission, and we wanted to provide you an opportunity to fly alongside us by sending your own digital files and photos to Moon! Find out more and get involved here - To The Moon
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Show Notes
Nell’s interest in ML & ethics [3:13]
QuantaCorp & Nell’s ML background [4:15]
The shift from tech development to ethics [7:37]
EthicsNet.org Oversight & Moderation [12:28]
Human In The Loop Limits on AI [14:05]
Hackability & Bias in Humans & AI [17:05]
Ethics of Disparate AI Impact [20:52]
Existential Risk & AGI [22:44]
Risk of Information Gerrymandering & Shadow banning [27:03]
CulturalPeace.org Rules for Culture Wars [30:24]
Nell’s Work on Contact Tracing Ethics [36:07]
The COVID-19 Pandemic [39:36]
Blockchain & Trusted Institutions [40:25]
Nell’s Humanity Plus talk on Genetic Privilege [42:28]
Nell’s Reading Recommendations [43:45]
Mentioned
QuantaCorp
Nell Watson TEDx talk, "Gaslighting AI & Cyber Poltergeists”
Study, “Extraneous factors in judicial decisions”
Facebook Radioactive Data Tracking
Paperclip Maximizer
OpenAI’s GTP-3
AI Control Problem
Informational Gerrymandering
Subreddit Simulator
Geneva Conventions
Sen. Orrin Hatch essay “Geneva Conventions for the Culture War”
Exponential View by Azeem Azhar
Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
Wendel Wallach & Colin Allens’s Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong
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