New International Grants Program Jump-Starts Research to Ensure AI Remains Beneficial
Elon-Musk-backed program signals growing interest in new branch of artificial intelligence research...MORE
Amid rapid industry investment in developing smarter artificial intelligence, a new branch of research has begun to take off aimed at ensuring that society can reap the benefits of AI while avoiding potential pitfalls.
The Boston-based Future of Life Institute (FLI) today announced the selection of 37 research teams around the world to which it plans to award about $7 million from Elon Musk and the Open Philanthropy Project as part of a first-of-its-kind grant program dedicated to “keeping AI robust and beneficial”. The program launches as an increasing number of high-profile figures including Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking voice concerns about the possibility of powerful AI systems having unintended, or even potentially disastrous, consequences. The winning teams, chosen from nearly 300 applicants worldwide, will research a host of questions in computer science, law, policy, economics, and other fields relevant to coming advances in AI.
The 37 projects being funded include:
- Three projects developing techniques for AI systems to learn what humans prefer from observing our behavior, including projects at UC Berkeley and Oxford University
- A project by Benja Fallenstein at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute on how to keep the interests of superintelligent systems aligned with human values
- A project lead by Manuela Veloso from Carnegie-Mellon University on making AI systems explain their decisions to humans
- A study by Michael Webb of Stanford University on how to keep the economic impacts of AI beneficial
- A project headed by Heather Roff studying how to keep AI-driven weapons under “meaningful human control”
- A new Oxford-Cambridge research center for studying AI-relevant policy
As Skype-founder Jaan Tallinn, one of FLI's founders, has described this new research direction, "Building advanced AI is like launching a rocket. The first challenge is to maximize acceleration, but once it starts picking up speed, you also need to to focus on steering."...
