12.1 - CC: AI & Humanity

Artificial Intelligence Policy

🧠 Think:

• What kind of world are we heading to with the advent of higher and higher level artificial intelligence systems? What role do policymakers have shaping that world, and with what policies?

📖 Read:

• Amodei, 2024. “Machines of Loving Grace”

🎧 Listen:

• Jack Clark, Plain English with Derek Thopmson. “Anthropic Thinks AI Might Destroy the Economy. It’s Building It Anyway.”

🌐 Browse:

• Acemoglu, 2024. “The Harms of AI” Oxford Handbook of AI Governance.
• “Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter” and “Policymaking in the Pause”
• Grace et al, 2024. “Thousands of AI Authors on the Future of AI” Preprint.}

📚 Additional Resources:

• A few slightly further flung resources than usual, but ones I have found useful and interesting as I think about the future of society and technology:
  • Healy, 2024. Ordinal Society
  • Scott, 2020. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
  • Fukuyama, 1992. The End of History and the Last Man
  • Christian, 2019. Origin Story: A Big History of Everything and Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History

📝 Submit:

• Discussion question to course chat

TipTip

• “📖 Read”, “🎧 Listen”, and/or “📺 Watch” items are required content for the day, and should be read/heard/watched before class on that day.
• “🌐 Browse” items should be briefly looked at but do not need to be read deeply unless you want to
• “📚 Additional Resources” do not need to be looked at; they are there to serve, if useful, as further references for your debates, final projects, and general edification later.