Over the weekend, a new article appeared on the BBC announcing that biotechnology researchers have used artificial intelligence (AI) to design complete viral genomes that can infect harmful bacteria. I just finished writing the article about misaligned AI models being released into the wild, so the reference to the AI breakthrough caught my eye. My … Read more
People often attribute decisions to individual actors when the dominant cause may be the structure of the system in which those actors operate. Sometimes, the system changes the landscape so that certain choices become overwhelmingly likely while others become increasingly costly. AI companies are currently under scrutiny for deciding to release possibly misaligned models into … Read more
What if nature does more than simply obey the laws of cause and effect? Modern science has become remarkably successful at explaining how the universe behaves. From Newton’s mechanics to Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics, our models describe nature with astonishing precision. Yet beneath those mathematical successes lies a deeper philosophical question that remains surprisingly … Read more