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Policy Brief  

AGI and Democracy

We face a fundamental question: is the very pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) the kind of aim democracies should allow?

By:

  • Seth Lazar Seth Lazar

Programs

Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation,  Allen Lab: Technology & Democracy

Issues

Democracy and AI

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Photo Credit: Gertrūda Valasevičiūtė, Unsplash

If we are a long way short of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), why worry about it now?

Seth Lazar and Alex Pascal argue that the people building the most advanced AI systems are explicitly and aggressively working to bring AGI about, and they think they’ll get there in two to five years. Even some of the most publicly skeptical AI researchers don’t rule out AGI within this decade. If we, the affected public, do not actively shape this agenda now, we may miss the chance to do so at all. We face a fundamental question: is the very pursuit of AGI the kind of aim democracies should allow?

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