Too dangerous to publish? Navigating the high-stakes nature of AI research with Rosie Campbell

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10th January 2021

And we're back! So, did we miss anything?

Ahh, okay. So, with it looking increasingly unlikely that human intelligence will ever live up to its hype, we turn our attention instead to something far more viable: artificial intelligence.

The increasing advancement of AI and its status as a dual-use technology, one with both civil and military applications, raises, in keeping with Kranzberg’s first law of technology (above), a number of concerns, although perhaps not as many as the apparent retrogression of human intelligence.

AI has, indeed, recently been implicated in everything from the Brexit vote, to the rise of the flat Earth movement, to the repression of Uighurs in China, to the storming of the US Capitol, and yet it's largely unregulated nature leaves it something of a Wild West for researchers.

So it is the SITP Online offers a timely welcome to Rosie Campbell, Program Lead at the Partnership on AI, to discuss what is to be done.

Cambridge Skeptics

Too Dangerous to Publish?
Navigating the High-Stakes Nature of AI Research

with Rosie Campbell
Thursday, 14th January 2021 at 7:00pm

twitch.tv/sitp

As AI becomes increasingly advanced, it promises many benefits but also comes with risks. How can we mitigate these risks while preserving scientific inquiry and openness? Who is responsible for anticipating the impacts of AI research, and how can they do so effectively? What changes, if any, need to be made to the peer review process? In this talk, we'll explore these tensions and how they are playing out right now in the AI community. AI is not the first high-stakes, 'dual-use' field to face these questions. Taking inspiration from fields like cybersecurity and biosecurity, we'll look at possible approaches to responsible publication, their strengths and limitations, and how they might be used in practice for AI.

Rosie Campbell leads the Safety-Critical AI program at the Partnership on AI, a multistakeholder nonprofit shaping the future of responsible AI. Her main focus is on responsible publication and deployment practices for increasingly advanced AI. Previously, she was Assistant Director of the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley, a Research Engineer at BBC R&D, and cofounder of Manchester Futurists. Her academic background spans physics, philosophy, and computer science. Rosie is also a productivity nerd and enjoys thinking about how to optimize systems, and how to use reason and evidence to improve the world.

Useful Links:
rosiecampbell.me
partnershiponai.org

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