Sparking conversation around the future of AI

It’s August! That means it’s Edinburgh festival season! And with the festivals making their comeback this year it’s great to be in the city and taking part in the Fringe.

I’m an Ethics Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute – the UK’s national institute for AI and data science – and for me the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is the perfect opportunity to spark public conversations around the future of AI. This year this feels more relevant than ever as in the months leading up to the festival AI has rarely been out of the headlines: there have been high profile stories about the claims that Google’s LAMDA gained sentience, discussions of bias within DALL-E, and then some fairly sensationalised reports of a Russian chess-playing robot supposedly “going rogue” and breaking a little boy’s finger [3]. As these stories do the rounds questions are raised around what is real and what is really possible. There is no shortage of movies or TV programmes predicting dystopian futures with super-intelligent AI and killer robots, so it’s little surprise that these narratives remain strong, but they also distract from the ways that AI is already impacting all our lives today and transforming our society.

Every time a news story breaks about sentient AI the narratives of super-intelligence and existential threats are further entrenched in public discourse around AI. That is dangerous. Not simply because it is misleading, and not because it makes people worried about AI but because it misdirects public concerns to far-fetched visions of what AI could possibly achieve in the future, rather than engaging people in debates around the ways that AI is already affecting our lives and transforming our society right now.

Working towards beneficial AI

In order to ensure that future innovation and deployment of AI benefits – rather than harms – society it is vital that we have greater public discussion around the role and limits of AI. That’s why I am performing at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe with my show “Will Killer Robots Save Humanity?”. I’ll be discussing the good, the bad and the in-between of AI and aiming to convince the audience that killer robots won’t destroy us all but that they may force us to confront what it means to be human.

My show is part of the Cabaret of Dangerous Ideas (CoDI) which is a series of spoken word shows which has been running at the Fringe each year since 2012. CoDI challenges academics to get out of their comfort zones and discuss their research within the fairly chaotic and sometimes anarchic setting of the Fringe. There are a couple of things that make CoDI shows really special, firstly they are compered by the wonderful, sharp-witted Susan Morrison a professional stand-up comedian who has an amazing skill of cutting to the heart of matters while also ensuring that the shows are a perfect blend of informed discussion and irreverent humour. Secondly, CoDI shows are not lectures, half the time in all CoDI shows is reserved for audience questions and discussion. This is the bit I really love. It is impossible to predict what an audience will ask or which aspects of what I present will spark the most interest. Over the years that I have been involved with CoDI I have been consistently surprised by the range of considerations that audiences have raised, sometimes this has highlighted how the topics discussed do – or do not – feel relevant to their lives, sometimes it has been to challenge ideas put forward, sometimes to suggest areas where there might be opportunities to develop and deploy AI in novel and socially beneficial ways, but which ever direction the discussion goes in it’s always valuable, thoughtful and illuminating. These discussions have often pointed to new research questions or led me to re-consider aspects of my research. For me that’s what public engagement is all about, it’s a two way street, a dialogue and a conversation not a lecture.

And that’s also why I think CoDI and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe are the perfect opportunity to catalyse vital public conversations about the role of AI in our lives and in our societies. We need more of these discussions to inform innovation, policy, governance and regulation – but for now I hope people will come to my show learn a few things, develop their own opinions and most importantly have some fun!

Tickets!

My show is on at the New Town Theatre on the 12th and 28th August, tickets are available here: https://www.thestand.co.uk/shows/1313-will-killer-robots-save-humanity-2022/