AGI Zeitgeist

Panel evidence

Prominence evidence: group-a

A working document. It is one of the documents the site is built from, published as it is written for anyone checking the work, and it uses the project's own shorthand. The plain account of the same material is on the home page.

Prominence evidence: group-a

Checked against the brief's test: at least three different pieces about where AI is going, in national outlets, naming the person, dated on or before 2017-12-31.

Access notes, which apply to every section:

Ray Kurzweil

Verdict: passes

  1. 2011-02-10 | Time | "2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal" | https://time.com/archive/6595274/2045-the-year-man-becomes-immortal/ | fetched | The cover story is about him: his prediction that computers will pass human intelligence by 2045.
  2. 2015-11-23 | The New Yorker | "The Doomsday Invention" (Raffi Khatchadourian) | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom | fetched (full text read from the PDF printout at https://people.ict.usc.edu/~gratch/CSCI534/Readings/The%20Philosopher%20of%20Doomsday%20_%20The%20New%20Yorker.pdf) | "the futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil wrote 'The Singularity Is Near,' a best-seller that prophesied a merging of man and machine".
  3. 2014-07-08 | New York Times | "Silicon Valley Sharknado" (Maureen Dowd, opinion column) | NYT URL not confirmed (nytimes.com blocked). A copy of the text sits at https://www.as.utexas.edu/astronomy/education/fall14/wheeler/secure/Dowd_SiliconValleySharknado.pdf (not read) | seen in search result | Named as Google's director of engineering, running a project to bring AI to human-level intelligence by 2029 and to the Singularity by 2045. Extra: Vanity Fair, April 2017 issue (posted online 2017-03), "Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse" (Maureen Dowd). Read only through a reprint on Kurzweil's own site (https://www.thekurzweillibrary.com/vanity-fair-elon-musks-billion-dollar-crusade-to-stop-the-ai-apocalypse). That reprint quotes him on how far AI has come. Queries: "Ray Kurzweil singularity artificial intelligence New York Times 2017 OR 2016 OR 2015 OR 2012"; ""Merely Human? That's So Yesterday" Kurzweil New York Times 2010"; "Maureen Dowd "Silicon Valley Sharknado" July 2014 Kurzweil nytimes"; "Vanity Fair 2017 Maureen Dowd "Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse" Hassabis Bostrom Altman"

Nick Bostrom

Verdict: passes

  1. 2015-11-23 | The New Yorker | "The Doomsday Invention" (Raffi Khatchadourian) | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom | fetched (full text read from the USC PDF printout) | The profile is about him and his book Superintelligence.
  2. 2015-12-27 | Washington Post | "The A.I. anxiety" (Joel Achenbach) | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/12/27/aianxiety/ | seen in search result (the fetch returned 403) | Called "the world's spookiest philosopher". The piece covers his paperclip thought experiment about a superintelligent machine.
  3. 2015-12-15 | MIT Technology Review | "What Will It Take to Build a Virtuous AI?" (Will Knight) | https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/12/15/247302/what-will-it-take-to-build-a-virtuous-ai/ | fetched | Cites his book Superintelligence as the source of warnings about AI that humans can't control. Extra: The Guardian (Observer), "Artificial intelligence: 'We're like children playing with a bomb'" (Tim Adams), June 2016. Seen in search result through a repost on bioethics.com dated 2016-06-14. Guardian URL not found (theguardian.com blocked). Queries: "Nick Bostrom superintelligence New Yorker 2015 "The Doomsday Invention""; "Guardian "we're like children playing with a bomb" Nick Bostrom 2016"; "Washington Post Achenbach December 2015 "The A.I. anxiety" Bostrom"; "Achenbach "The A.I. anxiety" Bostrom" (washingtonpost.com only)

Eliezer Yudkowsky

Verdict: unclear. I found three pieces from 2017 or earlier, but each one is weak on one part of the test. Read strictly, he fails. Read generously, he passes.

  1. 2011-11-28 | The New Yorker | "No Death, No Taxes" (George Packer) | New Yorker URL not found (newyorker.com blocked) | fetched (full text read from a PDF copy at https://www.piecesetmaindoeuvre.com/IMG/pdf/No_Death_no_taxes-2.pdf) | Named several times as "the artificial-intelligence researcher". Thiel is described as the largest donor to "the Singularity Institute … co-founded, in 2000, by his friend Eliezer Yudkowsky", which works to keep an "intelligence explosion" "human-friendly". Weak point: the piece is a profile of Peter Thiel's futurism, and AI's future is only part of it.
  2. 2014-07-17 | Slate | "The Most Terrifying Thought Experiment of All Time" (David Auerbach) | https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/rokos-basilisk-the-most-terrifying-thought-experiment-of-all-time.html | fetched | Named as the founder of LessWrong and head of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute. The piece is about a thought experiment involving a future superintelligent AI. Weak point: Slate is a national online magazine but is not on the brief's example list.
  3. 2016-03-01 | Scientific American | "AI Visionary Eliezer Yudkowsky on the Singularity, Bayesian Brains and Closet Goblins" (John Horgan) | https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/cross-check/ai-visionary-eliezer-yudkowsky-on-the-singularity-bayesian-brains-and-closet-goblins/ | fetched | A full interview with him about the Singularity and the risks of superintelligence. Weak point: it ran in Horgan's "Cross-check" column, which Scientific American hosts on its blog network. The brief excludes blogs. Not found: no piece from 2017 or earlier in the New York Times, Guardian, BBC, FT, Economist, Time or Wired turned up in searches. (A 2017 Vanity Fair piece by Dowd came up, but I could not check whether it names him.) Queries: "Eliezer Yudkowsky artificial intelligence risk article 2015 OR 2016 OR 2017 Guardian OR Vanity Fair OR Wired"; "Eliezer Yudkowsky New York Times singularity 2009 OR 2010 OR 2014 OR 2016"; "Eliezer Yudkowsky artificial intelligence" (limited to Washington Post, Time, MIT Technology Review, Forbes, NPR, CNN, PBS, Newsweek, Scientific American, Fortune, Bloomberg, Globe and Mail, CBC, ABC Australia); "George Packer New Yorker 2011 "No Death, No Taxes" Thiel Singularity Yudkowsky"; ""Yudkowsky" 2014 OR 2015 OR 2016 OR 2017 superintelligence friendly AI article Slate OR Bloomberg OR Forbes OR "New York Times" OR Atlantic"; "Roko's Basilisk "most terrifying thought experiment of all time" Slate 2014 Yudkowsky"; "Yudkowsky Singularity Institute artificial intelligence 2008 OR 2009 OR 2012 OR 2013 Time OR Newsweek OR Forbes OR "Wall Street Journal" OR "Financial Times""; "Wired Eliezer Yudkowsky 2008 OR 2012 OR 2016 singularity rationalist AI"; ""Eliezer Yudkowsky" Guardian OR BBC OR "Financial Times" OR Economist article 2015 2016 2017 AI could destroy humanity"

Robin Hanson

Verdict: passes. All three pieces cover his 2016 book The Age of Em, about a future run by digital copies of human brains. Only the Guardian is on the brief's example list. Reason is a national monthly magazine that is not on the list, and the Scientific American piece ran in a blog-hosted column.

  1. 2016-06-15 | The Guardian | "The Age of Em review – the horrific future when robots rule the Earth" (Steven Poole) | Guardian URL not confirmed (blocked) | seen in search result | A review of his book.
  2. 2016-06-03 | Reason | "Artificial Robot Brains Take Over the World" (Ronald Bailey) | https://reason.com/2016/06/03/artificial-robot-brains-take-over-the-wo/ | fetched | Named as "the George Mason economist" who wrote The Age of Em. The review discusses his ideas throughout.
  3. 2016-06-21 | Scientific American | "When Simulations Replace Reality: A Q&A with Robin Hanson, Big Ideas Guy" (John Horgan) | https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/cross-check/when-simulations-replace-reality-a-q-a-with-robin-hanson-big-ideas-guy/ | fetched | A full interview about brain copies and the future they would bring. (Same caveat as above: blog-hosted column.) Queries: "Robin Hanson "Age of Em" robots future 2016 Economist OR Guardian OR Atlantic"; "Robin Hanson emulations robots economics interview 2016 Washington Post OR "New York Times" OR Economist OR Wired"; "Robin Hanson robots future em emulation" (limited to Washington Post, Time, MIT Technology Review, Forbes, NPR, CNN, PBS, Newsweek, Scientific American, Fortune, Bloomberg, Globe and Mail, CBC, ABC Australia); ""Robin Hanson" economist robots brain emulation 2016 Washington Post OR Bloomberg OR Forbes OR "Wall Street Journal" OR Times"

Geoffrey Hinton

Verdict: passes

  1. 2015-11-23 | The New Yorker | "The Doomsday Invention" (Raffi Khatchadourian) | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom | fetched (full text read from the USC PDF printout) | The keynote speaker at a Royal Society AI meeting, quoted on whether AI could be controlled: "That is like asking if a child can control his parents".
  2. 2015-05-21 | The Guardian | "Google a step closer to developing machines with human-like intelligence" | http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/21/google-a-step-closer-to-developing-machines-with-human-like-intelligence (URL and date confirmed through an Australian National University mailing-list copy; article body not read) | seen in search result | Interviewed. He predicts "thought vectors" could give AI human-like common sense within a decade.
  3. 2016-09-28 | Fortune | "Why Deep Learning Is Suddenly Changing Your Life" (Roger Parloff) | https://fortune.com/longform/ai-artificial-intelligence-deep-machine-learning/ | fetched | Named as the University of Toronto pioneer of neural networks. He comments on what current systems can't yet do, namely reasoning. Extra: The New Yorker, 2017-04-03, "A.I. Versus M.D." (Siddhartha Mukherjee). Seen in search result. He is quoted: "in five years deep learning is going to do better than radiologists." Also MIT Technology Review, 2015-08-06 (the LeCun piece below), which names him. Queries: "Geoffrey Hinton deep learning future of AI New Yorker OR Wired OR Toronto Life 2017"; "Guardian May 2015 Hinton "thought vectors" "Google a step closer to developing machines with human-like intelligence""; "New Yorker April 2017 Mukherjee "A.I. Versus M.D." Hinton radiologists"

Yann LeCun

Verdict: passes. Three different outlets, but none from the main newspaper or broadcaster tier. Popular Science is a national science magazine that is not on the example list.

  1. 2015-08-06 | MIT Technology Review | "Teaching Machines to Understand Us" (Tom Simonite) | https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/08/06/10909/teaching-machines-to-understand-us/ | fetched | The piece centres on him. He predicts AI helpers with near-human command of language "in just two to five years".
  2. 2016-09-28 | Fortune | "Why Deep Learning Is Suddenly Changing Your Life" (Roger Parloff) | https://fortune.com/longform/ai-artificial-intelligence-deep-machine-learning/ | fetched | Named as the French deep learning pioneer from his years at Bell Labs. The piece is about where AI is heading.
  3. 2015-09-22 | Popular Science | "Inside Facebook's artificial intelligence lab" (Dave Gershgorn) | https://www.popsci.com/facebook-ai/ | fetched | Quoted as head of Facebook's AI lab, calling AI "one of the biggest, most complicated scientific challenges of our time". Extra: Slate, 2015-11-05, "Top Facebook Researcher Says Exciting Things Are Happening in A.I., for Real This Time" (fetched). It is mostly about near-term uses of AI and the risk of another funding collapse in the field, so it only partly fits "AI futures". Queries: "Yann LeCun artificial intelligence future 2015 OR 2016 OR 2017 interview" (limited to Washington Post, Time, MIT Technology Review, Forbes, NPR, CNN, PBS, Newsweek, Scientific American, Fortune, Bloomberg, Globe and Mail, CBC, ABC Australia); "Yann LeCun Facebook AI future intelligent machines 2014 OR 2015 OR 2016 Wired OR "Washington Post" OR Forbes OR Guardian"; "Yann LeCun Fortune 2016 OR 2017 "artificial intelligence" deep learning future common sense"; "Yann LeCun AI "killer robots" OR "superintelligence" OR "human-level" 2015 OR 2016 OR 2017"; ""LeCun" Facebook artificial intelligence lab future of AI article 2014 2015 New York Times OR Wired OR Guardian OR "Washington Post""

Yoshua Bengio

Verdict: passes, with caveats. Only one piece (MIT Technology Review 2016) is both confirmed and clearly about AI's future. The Forbes piece was seen only in a search result, on Forbes's contributor network. The Globe and Mail piece is an opinion article he co-wrote, about Canada's AI industry.

  1. 2016-01-29 | MIT Technology Review | "Will Machines Eliminate Us?" (Will Knight) | https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/01/29/162084/will-machines-eliminate-us/ | fetched | An interview with him about whether AI threatens humanity. He calls the fears overstated and worries more about misuse and military uses.
  2. 2017-11-06 | Forbes | "Why Montreal Has Emerged As An Artificial Intelligence Powerhouse" (Peter High, contributor) | https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterhigh/2017/11/06/why-montreal-has-emerged-as-an-artificial-intelligence-powerhouse/ | seen in search result (the fetch returned 403) | An interview. He says "we are far from human level intelligence with computers" and that a Terminator-style takeover is far off.
  3. 2017-07-05 | The Globe and Mail | "It's time to make the Canadian AI ecosystem bloom" (Foteini Agrafioti, Yoshua Bengio, Tomi Poutanen) | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/its-time-to-make-the-canadian-ai-ecosystem-bloom/article35559957/ | fetched | Co-author, described as head of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms. Weak point: he wrote it myself, and it is about national AI policy rather than where AI is going. Extra: MIT Technology Review, 2015-08-06, "Teaching Machines to Understand Us" (fetched). Names him briefly as part of the "deep-learning conspiracy". Queries: "Yoshua Bengio interview "Will Machines Eliminate Us" MIT Technology Review 2016"; "Yoshua Bengio artificial intelligence future Montreal 2016 OR 2017" (limited to Globe and Mail, CBC, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Time, Forbes, Fortune, MIT Technology Review, Scientific American, Newsweek); ""Bengio" deep learning AI future 2016 OR 2017 Globe and Mail OR Bloomberg OR "New York Times" OR CBC Montreal researcher"

Demis Hassabis

Verdict: passes

  1. 2015-11-23 | The New Yorker | "The Doomsday Invention" (Raffi Khatchadourian) | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom | fetched (full text read from the USC PDF printout) | Named as DeepMind's chief founder. He describes the company to the Royal Society as an "Apollo Program" for AI and talks about building "artificial scientists".
  2. 2016-09-28 | Fortune | "Why Deep Learning Is Suddenly Changing Your Life" (Roger Parloff) | https://fortune.com/longform/ai-artificial-intelligence-deep-machine-learning/ | fetched | Named as DeepMind's chief executive, who combined deep learning with trial-and-error learning to build AlphaGo.
  3. 2017-03 (April 2017 issue) | Vanity Fair | "Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse" (Maureen Dowd) | Vanity Fair URL not confirmed (blocked) | seen in search result | Described as a leading builder of advanced AI, talking with Musk about the dangers of AI. Queries: covered by the shared searches above: "Maureen Dowd Vanity Fair April 2017 Musk A.I. apocalypse Demis Hassabis Sam Altman Eliezer Yudkowsky", the Fortune and New Yorker checks, and "Vanity Fair 2017 Maureen Dowd ... Hassabis Bostrom Altman". I did not need searches aimed at him alone.

Shane Legg

Verdict: fails (as searched) Nothing found in a national outlet on the brief's example list. Two near-misses, both January 2014 coverage of Google buying DeepMind, both quoting his 2011 LessWrong remark that AI is the "number 1 risk for this century":

  1. 2014-01-29 | Huffington Post | "Google's New A.I. Ethics Board Might Save Humanity From Extinction" (Bianca Bosker) | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/29/google-ai_n_4683343.html (URL from a LessWrong post that links to it) | seen in search result | Named as DeepMind co-founder and quoted: "Eventually, I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this." The Huffington Post is a national news website but is not on the example list.
  2. 2014 (exact date not found) | Business Insider | "Google Has An Internal Committee To Discuss Its Fears About The Power Of Artificial [Intelligence]" | http://www.businessinsider.com/if-google-is-worried-about-artificial-intelligence-then-you-should-be-too (URL from a LessWrong post) | seen in search result | Same quote. Not on the example list, and the date is unconfirmed. Rejected: Christian Science Monitor, 2014-01-27, "Google acquires artificial intelligence firm DeepMind" (fetched). It names him only as a founder, in a piece about the deal with no AI-futures content. The New Yorker's "The Doomsday Invention" (2015) does not name him. A LessWrong reader mentions a New York Times blog post that quoted him in January 2014; I could not find it. Queries: "Shane Legg DeepMind human-level AI risk" (domain-limited; rejected); "Shane Legg DeepMind artificial general intelligence" (limited to Washington Post, Time, MIT Technology Review, Forbes, NPR, CNN, PBS, Newsweek, Scientific American, Fortune, Bloomberg, Globe and Mail, CBC, ABC Australia); ""Shane Legg" DeepMind co-founder artificial intelligence 2014 OR 2015 OR 2016 OR 2017 risk human-level"; ""Legg" "number 1 risk for this century" DeepMind Google 2014 article"; "Shane Legg DeepMind" (domain-limited, plus HuffPost); ""Shane Legg" 2016 OR 2017 interview AGI safety DeepMind Wired OR Guardian OR Economist OR "Financial Times" OR Times"; ""Google's New A.I. Ethics Board Might Save Humanity From Extinction" Huffington Post 2014 Legg"; "New York Times Bits blog January 2014 DeepMind Google ethics board "Legg" LessWrong 2011"

Sam Altman

Verdict: passes

  1. 2015-12-11 | Fortune | "Elon Musk, Amazon Create Artificial Intelligence Research Center" | https://fortune.com/2015/12/11/open-ai/ | fetched | Named as co-founder and co-chair of OpenAI. The piece covers OpenAI's stated aim of making AI turn out well for everyone, and the risks of AI built for commercial ends.
  2. 2015-12-15 | MIT Technology Review | "What Will It Take to Build a Virtuous AI?" (Will Knight) | https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/12/15/247302/what-will-it-take-to-build-a-virtuous-ai/ | fetched | Named as one of OpenAI's backers (not quoted). The piece is about the risk of super-smart AI that humans can't control.
  3. 2016-10-03 online (2016-10-10 issue) | The New Yorker | "Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny" (Tad Friend; print title "Adding a Zero") | New Yorker URL not found (newyorker.com blocked) | seen in search result | A profile of him. It covers his view of AI as an end-of-the-world risk and his preparations for it. Queries: ""Sam Altman's Manifest Destiny" New Yorker Tad Friend October 2016 artificial intelligence"; "Markoff New York Times December 2015 "Artificial-Intelligence Research Center Is Founded by Silicon Valley Investors" Altman"; "Sam Altman OpenAI artificial intelligence superhuman machine intelligence 2015 OR 2016 OR 2017" (limited to Washington Post, Time, MIT Technology Review, Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg, Newsweek, Scientific American, NPR, CNN, Globe and Mail, CBC); "New Yorker "Manifest Destiny" Tad Friend Altman OpenAI "A.I." superintelligence merge humans 2016"; "Markoff "Silicon Valley Investors to Bankroll Artificial-Intelligence Center" OR "Artificial-Intelligence Research Center Is Founded" December 2015 Altman Sutskever"; "Washington Post December 2015 OpenAI Musk Altman nonprofit artificial intelligence humanity" (domain-limited)

Summary

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