AGI Zeitgeist

Panel evidence

Prominence evidence — group-c

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-c

Rule being tested: named in at least three distinct national-outlet pieces about AI futures dated 2017 or earlier. Search note: the search tool refuses domain filters for nytimes.com, theguardian.com, wired.com, bbc.com, economist.com, newscientist.com, theatlantic.com, newyorker.com, ft.com, telegraph.co.uk, independent.co.uk, reuters.com and usatoday.com, and the fetch tool cannot open nytimes.com or wired.com. So evidence leans towards outlets that can be reached (MIT Technology Review, Fortune, ABC Australia, CNN, NPR). A "fails" below can mean "not findable with these tools", especially for people mostly covered by the Guardian, the New York Times or Wired.

Dario Amodei

Verdict: fails (as searched) — two confirmed pieces; a third very likely exists but could not be confirmed

  1. 2016-06-22 | MIT Technology Review | "Google Gets Practical about the Dangers of AI" (Tom Simonite) | https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/06/22/70764/google-gets-practical-about-the-dangers-of-ai/ | fetched | Named as Chris Olah's Google colleague and co-author of the five-problem AI safety paper ("Concrete Problems in AI Safety").
  2. 2017-08 (around 13 August) | New York Times | "Teaching A.I. Systems to Behave Themselves" (Cade Metz) | https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/technology/artificial-intelligence-safety-training.html | seen in search result (NYT not fetchable; the search showed the ACM news reprint, which credits the NYT and dates it August 2017; the CNBC republication of 2017-08-14, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/14/elon-musk-started-artificial-intelligence-lab-teaching-machines-rules.html, returned a 403 error when fetched) | Profiled: "The researcher Dario Amodei showed off an autonomous system that taught itself to play Coast Runners…"; "Mr. Amodei and his colleague Paul Christiano are developing algorithms…". The exact URL is my best match and was not confirmed by fetching.

Leopold Aschenbrenner

Verdict: fails (as searched)

Daniel Kokotajlo

Verdict: fails (as searched)

Ajeya Cotra

Verdict: fails (as searched)

Jensen Huang

Verdict: passes (only one outlet, Fortune, besides MIT Technology Review; piece 3 is weaker, see note)

  1. 2017-05-12 | MIT Technology Review | "Nvidia CEO: Software Is Eating the World, but AI Is Going to Eat Software" (Tom Simonite) | https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/05/12/151722/nvidia-ceo-software-is-eating-the-world-but-ai-is-going-to-eat-software/ | fetched | Interviewed throughout about where AI is going: says the machine-learning revolution is "very early on" and predicts AI will transform health care and cars.
  2. 2016-09-28 | Fortune | "Why Deep Learning Is Suddenly Changing Your Life" (Roger Parloff; now headlined "From 2016: Why Deep Learning Is Suddenly Changing Your Life") | https://fortune.com/ai-artificial-intelligence-deep-machine-learning/ | fetched | Quoted as Nvidia's CEO: "You essentially have software writing software"; also "2015 was the big year… All of a sudden last year, something happened."
  3. 2016-01-13 | Fortune | "AI Goes Mainstream" (Alan Murray) | https://www.fortune.com/2016/01/13/ai-goes-mainstream/ | fetched | Named as Nvidia's CEO visiting Fortune to talk about AI; quoted on 2015 as AI's breakout year. Caveat: this looks like Murray's short CEO Daily column on fortune.com rather than a full feature article; it is about AI's direction, not chip sales.

Mustafa Suleyman

Verdict: passes (three outlets)

  1. 2016-10-10 | Fortune | "Google Artificial Intelligence Guru Says A.I. Won't Kill Jobs" (Jonathan Vanian; the search listing shows "…Won't Eliminate Jobs") | https://fortune.com/2016/10/10/google-artificial-intelligence-deepmind-jobs/ | fetched | Profiled as DeepMind co-founder; argues humanity is "many decades away" from replacing workers at scale, and "Humans remain the ultimate controller of the systems."
  2. 2016-09-28 | NPR | "Tech Giants Form 'Partnership On AI' To Tackle The Ethics Of Artificial Intelligence" | https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/09/28/495812849/tech-giants-team-up-to-tackle-the-ethics-of-artificial-intelligence | seen in search result (fetch timed out twice) | The search summary names him as DeepMind's representative and one of the founding executives of the industry group on AI ethics. Exact wording not seen.
  3. 2017-10-04 | MIT Technology Review | "DeepMind's New Ethics Team Wants to Solve AI's Problems Before They Happen" (Jamie Condliffe) | https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/10/04/67823/deepminds-new-ethics-team-wants-to-solve-ais-problems-before-they-happen/ | fetched | Quoted as DeepMind co-founder on the ethics unit working with think tanks and academics, and wanting "AI systems in production to be our highest collective selves." Queries: "Mustafa Suleyman" DeepMind artificial intelligence 2015 OR 2016 OR 2017 Guardian OR Telegraph OR BBC future risk; Mustafa Suleyman DeepMind artificial intelligence 2016 (limited to technologyreview/bloomberg/fortune/forbes/cnbc); "Mustafa Suleyman" 2015 OR 2016 OR 2017 "artificial intelligence" Guardian ethics board AI future speech; Partnership on AI launch September 2016 Suleyman co-chair Google DeepMind Facebook Amazon IBM Microsoft; Partnership on AI 2016 Suleyman Horvitz (limited to national US outlets); "Suleyman" DeepMind "Ethics & Society" October 2017 AI ethics unit launch. (One more filtered search was refused by the tool because of blocked domains.)

Oren Etzioni

Verdict: passes (all three in one outlet, MIT Technology Review; could not reach a second outlet with these tools)

  1. 2015-12-15 | MIT Technology Review | "What Will It Take to Build a Virtuous AI?" (Will Knight) | http://www.technologyreview.com/s/544556/what-will-it-take-to-build-a-virtuous-ai | fetched | Quoted as CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence on OpenAI's founding, and warning that long-term fears about AI ending humanity could distract from near-term issues such as jobs.
  2. 2016-09-01 | MIT Technology Review | "AI Wants to Be Your Bro, Not Your Foe" (Will Knight) | https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/09/01/157787/ai-wants-to-be-your-bro-not-your-foe/ | fetched | Quoted as co-author of Stanford's report on AI over the next hundred years (the One Hundred Year Study): "The extreme positive hype is wrong, and the fearmongering is not based on any data."
  3. 2016-11-02 | MIT Technology Review | "Yes, We Are Worried About the Existential Risk of Artificial Intelligence" (Allan Dafoe and Stuart Russell) | https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/11/02/156285/yes-we-are-worried-about-the-existential-risk-of-artificial-intelligence/ | fetched | A rebuttal aimed at Etzioni by name, disputing how he read his survey of AI researchers on superintelligence.

Luciano Floridi

Verdict: fails (as searched)

Toby Walsh

Verdict: passes (two outlets: ABC Australia and CNN)

  1. 2015-10-20 | ABC News (Australia) | "Australian AI expert Toby Walsh takes fight to ban 'killer robots' to United Nations after thousands sign petition" | https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-20/australian-ai-expert-calls-for-ban-on-killer-robots-at-un/6868834 | fetched | Profiled as a University of New South Wales AI expert invited to address the UN after his petition to ban autonomous weapons gathered over 20,000 signatures.
  2. 2017-08-21 | CNN (CNN Money) | "Elon Musk joins more than 100 experts calling for global ban on killer robots" | https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/21/technology/elon-musk-killer-robot-un-ban/index.html | seen in search result (fetch returned a 503 error) | Named as the Australia-based professor who helped organise the 2017 letter; quoted that AI can "be used in autonomous weapons to industrialize war."
  3. 2017-08-21 | ABC News (Australia) | "'Killer robot' fears prompt tech leaders to call for UN ban on lethal autonomous weapons" | https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-21/killer-robots-artificial-intelligence-tech-leaders-un-letter/8825906 | fetched | Quoted as a University of New South Wales AI expert: "There is an arms race going to happen with these technologies."

Summary

Rendered from docs/panel-evidence-2026-10/prominence-group-c.md at version a7bd17a.