The Singularity Institute’s “About Us” Page Monday, Sep 24 2007
singularity 1:43 am
Copied from here.
Our Mission
In the coming decades, humanity will likely create a powerful artificial intelligence. The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) exists to confront this urgent challenge, both the opportunity and the risk.
SIAI is a not-for-profit research institute in Palo Alto, California, with three major goals: furthering the nascent science of safe, beneficial advanced AI through research and development, research fellowships, research grants, and science education; furthering the understanding of its implications to society through the AI Impact Initiative and annual Singularity Summit; and furthering education among students to foster scientific research.
To learn more about the Singularity Institute’s charitable purpose, begin with What is the Singularity? and Why Work Toward the Singularity?, followed by Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk.
New PDF: The Singularity and Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
What We Do
- In-house research
- Research fellowships and grants
- Conferences, symposia, and events
- Educational outreach and awareness-building
Core Values
Mitigate existential risk; further research and development as swiftly as safety permits; advance high-impact philanthropy; set a high standard of integrity and honesty; preserve rationalist values; and maintain strict ethics.
Committments
- SIAI will not enter any partnership that compromises our core values.
- Technology developed by SIAI will not be used to harm human life.
- The challenge, opportunity and risk of artificial intelligence is the common concern of all humanity. SIAI will not show ethnic, national, political, or religious favoritism in the discharge of this responsibility.
September 26th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
//”Technology developed by SIAI will not be used to harm human life.”//
Even if it means bottling up tremendous benefits?
I’m just playing devil’s advocate, here, but sometimes people decide that some risks are worth taking. We’re used to thinking of technologies as useful for harmful, harmless, and helpful purposes, and often balance the risks and costs of misuse against the benefits accrued. Starting off with this injunction is comforting at first blush, but I can see how it could become a big problem.