AI and human agency
Narratives in AI safety mostly focus on the growing capability of AI models. For example, there are concerns that highly intelligent AI models could be used for criminal or disruptive purposes, may transform labour markets, or even seek to attain their own misaligned goals. In my lecture, I will argue that the most pressing question in AI safety is not artificial intelligence but artificial influence - the many ways that AI can be used to influence people. The widespread embedding of AI in digital platforms, applications and websites opens the door for a highly automated ‘influence economy’ in which conversational AI systems compete to directly influence our commercial and political choices. I will discuss with reference to empirical work showing that current AI systems can be highly persuasive, socially perceptive, and effective in parasocial relationship-building. I argue that we urgently need to consider how to build AI that enhances rather than degrades human agency.
Open to the public.
Please register here
The Institute for Ethics in AI will bring together world-leading philosophers and other experts in the humanities with the technical developers and users of AI in academia, business and government. The ethics and governance of AI is an exceptionally vibrant area of research at Oxford and the Institute is an opportunity to take a bold leap forward from this platform.
Every day brings more examples of the ethical challenges posed by AI, from face recognition to voter profiling, brain-machine interfaces to weaponised drones, and the ongoing discourse about how AI will impact employment on a global scale. This is urgent and important work that we intend to promote internationally as well as embedding in our own research and teaching here at Oxford.
Professor Christopher Summerfield
Christopher Summerfield is Fellow by special election and principal investigator at the Summerfield lab which conducts research into how humans make decisions.
Chris Summerfield was trained in psychology and neuroscience at University College London, Columbia University (New York), and the École normale supérieure (Paris). He is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the department of Experimental Psychology, where he heads a lab focussed on understanding the computational mechanisms by which humans make decisions, and how these processes are implemented in the brain. His work, which involves a combination of computer simulations, behavioural testing, and functional brain imaging, is funded by a grants from the European Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and the National Institute of Health.