10 Questions with SIAI President Michael Vassar
June 10 2009 / by Alvis Brigis / In association with Future Blogger.net
Category: Social Issues Year: 2009 Rating: 1
Recently appointed Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) President Michael Vassar, a hardcore proponent of science and reason, emphasizes the importance of "human rationality" when discussing the future, making clear that SIAI is an "analytical think tank and research organization, not an advocacy group". Vassar says he's apprehensive about a "possible decrease in the quality of debate as the [Singularity] goes mainstream" and that he would find a public backlash against intelligent debate of a Singularity "odd".
Enjoy the candid and insightful interview.
- Put on a 2009 summit and establish a regular schedule of summits on alternating coasts and with a regular format.
- Develop a body of technical and popular position papers and analysis that reflect our current views.
- Develop software to help interested people to explore the future forecasting consequences of a range of assumptions.
- Organize, probably with the Future of Humanity Institute, an essay contest in order to identify novel global catastrophic risks deserving of more serious analysis and drawing attention to the idea of rational treatment of catastrophic possibilities.
- Reinvent Enlightenment values by building a better forum than currently exists for rational deliberation and cooperative analysis and decision making.
- Most critically, as always, identify and train potential friendly AI researchers.
MV: Our efforts to develop a rigorous theory of Friendly Artificial Intelligence will continue, but our public outreach efforts will focus less narrowly on AI and more on the Singularity more generally and on promoting human rationality.
