- AI is likely to be a profoundly transformative
general purpose technology
that changes virtually every aspect of society,
the economy, politics, and the military.
And this is just the beginning.
The issue doesn't come down to consciousness
or will AI want to dominate the world or will it not?
That's not the issue.
The issue is will AI be powerful
and will it be able to generate wealth?
It's very likely that it will be able to do both.
And so just given that, the governance of AI
is the most important issue facing the world today
and especially in the coming decades.
(dramatic music)
My name is Allan Dafoe,
I am the director of the Centre for the Governance of AI
at the Future of Humanity Institute at University of Oxford.
The core part of my research
is to think about the governance problem with respect to AI.
So this is the problem of how the world can develop AI
in a way that maximizes the benefits and minimize the risks.
- So why is it so important
for us to govern artificial intelligence?
Well, first let's just consider how natural
human intelligence has impacted the world on its own.
- In many ways it's incredible
how far we've gone with human intelligence.
This human brain, which had all sorts of energy constraints
and physical constraints has been able
to build up this technological civilization,
which has produced cell phones and buildings,
education, penicillin, and flight.
Virtually everything that we have
to be thankful for is a product of human intelligence
and human cooperation.
(dramatic music)
With artificial intelligence,
we can amplify that and eventually extend it
beyond our imagination.
And it's hard for us to know now what that will mean
for the economy, for society, for the social impacts
and the possibilities that it will bring.
- AI isn't the first technology
that our society has had to grapple with how to govern.
In fact, many technologies like cars, guns, radio,
the internet are all subject to governance.
What sets AI apart is the kind of impact it can have
on society and on every other technology it touches.
- So if we govern AI well,
there's likely to be substantial advances in medicine,
transportation, helping to reduce global poverty
and help us address climate change.
The problem is if we don't govern it well,
it will also produce these negative
externalities in society.
Social media may make us more lonely,
self-driving cars may cause congestion,
autonomous weapons could cause
risks of flash escalations and more
or other kinds of military instability.
So the first layer is to address these unintended
consequences of the advances in AI that are emerging.
Then there's this bigger challenge
facing the governance of AI,
which is really the question of where do we want to go?
- The way we structure our governance of AI is crucial
possibly to the survival of our species.
When we consider how impactful this technology could be,
any system that governs its use
must be carefully constructed.
- There are many examples where society has stumbled
into very harmful situations.
World War I perhaps being one of the more illustrative ones
where no one leader really wanted to have this war.
But nevertheless, they were bound by the structure
of their system in a way that led them into this conflict.
So this is what I think we need to worry about.
(gentle music)
It's an incredibly hard problem.
You don't wanna make overly hard rules at the beginning
because that can overly bind the future.
You wanna allow the future to have their own freedom
and also to improve the institutions
when they have more information and are say better educated.
So recently I've been reading up on constitutional design.
I'm fascinated by this phenomenon of humans coming together
and articulating what's the framework
in which they wanna live into the future.
So this is something I'm thinking about
because I think we're at a new constitutional moment
to as a collective come to an understanding
about what are the futures that we don't want
and what are the futures that we do want.
Humanity has this wonderful opportunity
that we haven't had throughout history.
That opportunity is the chance to decide
what our future can be.
(suspense music)
If we overcome our sort of parochial differences
and interests and recognize
that we are at this rare moment in history,
when humanity has enough commonality,
we have enough common vision that if we want
we can build something together.
A shared institution for the future.
(gentle music)
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