BIG FIX: How to ensure AI benefits humanity

Americans are increasingly anxious about AI after weeks of warnings by tech experts that it could spiral out of control and trigger catastrophic events, even human extinction. A string of hacks by rogue AI agents has brought those concerns home, including breaches at Hugging Face, an attack on the Australian government and unauthorized probes of US government websites.

President Donald Trump isn’t buying it. After meeting with the AI executives yesterday, he doubled down on his position to trust the industry and not hamper the technology with government regulation. The leading AI companies signed a voluntary pledge to self-police over AI safety. Meanwhile, OpenAI decided to halt its latest model over security concerns.

On this month’s episode of The Big Fix, our series exploring solutions to major problems, we’re tackling artificial intelligence and asking: how can we ensure this technology best serves humanity? We’ve asked three experts to pitch their ideas for keeping AI in check and ensuring it works for us, not against us. We’ll debate ideas for averting a doomsday scenario, holding tech companies accountable, protecting kids in the classroom, and keeping humans in the workforce.

Guests:

• Malo Bourgon, CEO of MIRI (Machine Intelligence Research Institute)
• Sorelle Friedler, professor of computer science at Haverford College
• Martha Gimbel, executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale University