The Ethics of AI Assistants with Iason Gabriel

Imagine a future where we interact regularly with a range of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) assistants — and where millions of assistants interact with each other on our behalf. These experiences and interactions may soon become part of our everyday reality.

In this episode, host Hannah Fry and Google DeepMind Senior Staff Research Scientist Iason Gabriel discuss the ethical implications of advanced AI assistants. Drawing from Iason's recent paper, they examine value alignment, anthropomorphism, safety concerns, and the potential societal impact of these technologies. 

Timecodes: 

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:13 Definition of AI assistants
• 04:05 A utopic view
• 06:25 Iason’s background
• 07:45 The Ethics of Advanced AI Assistants paper
• 13:06 Anthropomorphism
• 14:07 Turing perspective
• 15:25 Anthropomorphism continued
• 20:02 The value alignment question
• 24:54 Deception
• 27:07 Deployed at scale
• 28:32 Agentic inequality
• 31:02 Unfair outcomes
• 34:10 Coordinated systems
• 37:10 A new paradigm
• 38:23 Tetradic value alignment
• 41:10 The future
• 42:41 Reflections from Hannah

Thanks to everyone who made this possible, including but not limited to: 

• Presenter: Professor Hannah Fry
• Series Producer: Dan Hardoon
• Editor: Rami Tzabar, TellTale Studios
• Commissioner & Producer: Emma Yousif
• Music composition: Eleni Shaw
• Camera Director and Video Editor: Daniel Lazard
• Audio Engineer: Perry Rogantin
• Video Studio Production: Nicholas Duke
• Video Editor: Bilal Merhi
• Video Production Design: James Barton
• Visual Identity and Design: Eleanor Tomlinson
• Production support: Mo Dawoud
• Commissioned by Google DeepMind

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