When AI Journalism Goes Bad - FLI - Future of Life Institute

Slate is currently running a feature called "Future Tense," which claims to be the "citizens guide to the future." Two of their recent articles, however, are full of inaccuracies about AI safety and the researchers studying it. While this is disappointing, it also represents a good opportunity to clear up some misconceptions about why AI safety research is necessary. The first contested article was Let Artificial Intelligence Evolve, by Michael Chorost, which displays a poor understanding of the issues surrounding the evolution of artificial intelligence. The second, How to be Good, by Adam Elkus, got some of the concerns about developing safe AI correct, but, in the process, did great disservice to one of today's most prominent AI safety researchers, as well as to scientific research in general.