Existential Hope Drop #5: Richard Mallah, Future of Life Institute
What Could Our Future Be Like If We Manage To Create Aligned AGI?
September 2022
What could our future be like if we manage to create aligned AGI? This Hope Drop features Richard Mallah, Director of AI Projects at The Future of Life Institute. The drop includes a new podcast episode on existential hope with Richard, artwork and a storytelling X-Hope bounty.
What could the world be like if we managed to get aligned AI? And what will it take to make such a future happen?
Richard Mallah is Director of AI Projects at the Future of Life Institute, where he works to move the world toward existential hope via the safe and beneficent development of advanced AI.
Richard speaks on:
His 2 decades of experience working on AI safety
What we need to do to get aligned AGI
Why we need to have more existential gratitude
And much more!
This interview was recorded in July 2022.
How could a world with aligned AGI look?
That is the vision of a potential eucatastrophe as proposed by Richard Mallah, which is the basis for this art piece. It shows a positive future in which aligned Artificial General Intelligence has helped humanity solve most of its problems. What we are seeing in this vision is a new and abundant world, with a wider moral circle for all living things. To hear Richard expand on his vision, and tell more about his work at FLI, listen to his interview in the Existential Hope podcast.
About the artist:
Linda Rolland, AKA Kalon Glaz, is a leading ArtistoPunk, author, and curator working within the digital art sphere. She is part of the cybernetic and see punk ecosystem and has curated and exhibited with leading digital artists such as Pia Myrvold, Pierre Friquet, Yann Minh, Patrick Moya, Nao, France Cadet, Zaven Paré, Filippe Vilas-boas, Tutsy Navarathna, Nicolas Magat, Bernard Szajner. Recently she presented her work at the Satellite Gallery in Paris for the “Happy birthday Robot,” celebrating the 100th anniversary of the word robot. She teaches “creating your metaverse” in collaboration with Yann Minh at the Intuit-lab School of Art and Design.
What would it be like and feel like to live in a world with aligned AGI?
Telling stories can help us make what seems abstract become real and clear in our minds. Therefore we have created a storytelling bounty based on Richard's vision of a positive future imagining a world where we have an aligned AGI that can help solve societal problems and lead to an ethical expansion.
Richard's vision:
Imagine an aligned AGI, solving technical safety, coordination and economic mechanisms, would create positive dynamics for everyone, knocking down societal problem after societal problem.
It would be a new world with much more abundance and opportunity to increase our moral circles and get along better. This would be a major inflection point for the world for the better.
NEWS FROM THE XHOPE ECOSYSTEM
NEW BOOK ON LONGTERMISM: WHAT WE OWE THE FUTURE
A guide for making the future go better by famous Oxford-philosopher William Macaskill. Humanity’s written history spans only five thousand years. Our yet-unwritten future could last for millions more – or it could end tomorrow. Staggering numbers of people will lead lives of flourishing or misery or never live at all, depending on what we do today.
SUPERLINEAR: WIN PRIZES TO MAKE MONEY & DO GOOD
What would you do with money to fund your best ideas?
TLDR: At Nonlinear, they think bounties/prizes are underutilized. They’re trying an experiment to decentralize prize funding. What would you do if you were a “prize regrantor” with $50,000 to fund your best x-risk prize ideas? If that excites you, apply here.