Professor Stuart Russell on AI, AGI, Education, Consciousness & The Future of Humanity

Stuart J. Russell is professor (and formerly chair) of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley. He is holder of the Smith-Zadeh Chair in Engineering and director of the Centre for Human-Compatible AI.
His book Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach is the standard text in AI; it has been translated into 14 languages and is used in over 1,400 universities in 128 countries.
Stuart also works for the United Nations, developing a new global seismic monitoring system for the nuclear-test-ban treaty. He is an honorary fellow of Wadham College, Oxford; distinguished fellow of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI; and fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He is a recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award of the National Science Foundation, the IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, the World Technology Award (Policy category), the Mitchell Prize of the American Statistical Association, the Feigenbaum Prize of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and Outstanding Educator Awards from both ACM and AAAI.
He received his B.A. with first-class honours in physics from Oxford University in 1982 and his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford in 1986.

[@BrunoPadilhaBlog]

Great interview!

[@GerardSans]

We DO know AI is not conscious and how it works down to a pretty good level. Somehow Prof Stuart Russell prefers to go on a leap here around these points. AI mysticism is not a good stance for anyone who works in science.

[@anthonypape6862]

Ok here’s the part I don’t get. Why do we think that if AI is doing all the work humans won’t be happy?? Here is what humans will do, and by the way this has happened before. When Henry Ford Created the Assembly Line and first mass produced car what happened? Well everyone can have a car now in theory. The productions theee but no one can afford one. So what happens? Ford has to pay people
Enough to buy his cars. It ends up
Making him and lots of others rich. The same will happen here. My hope is humans will do / things. 1. Work out with weights. All of that energy in gyms is lost. It could be harnessed, stored and used to make the power for the the machines to run. This solves two huge problems. One. We are too fat. Lifting weights an hour a day is one of the best things you can do for your self. And we will get good at it. Learn new form new, Exercises new diets. Two: now we have the green energy we need to combine with solar, wind, hydro and nuclear to be completely off fossil fuels. Except for motorcycles and fun cars. Last we will look good and start having sex again. We will be paid to lift weights and have sex and have babies. Sign me up