[Sci-tech-public] Invitation to the Morison Lecture and Prize with Zeynep Tufekci - “What if the Real Threat is Artificial Good-Enough Intelligence?” (Monday 24 February)

[Willamina Hadley]

Dear MIT Community,

The Program in Science, Technology, and Society invites you on Monday, February 24th, at 12:00 PM in the Nexus at Hayden Library to this year’s Morison Lecture and Prize, “What if the Real Threat is Artificial Good-Enough Intelligence?” with Turkish-American Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci.

What if the Real Threat is Artificial Good-Enough Intelligence?

Are we having the wrong nightmares about AI? Many worry that “artificial general intelligence” — AGI, or when machine intelligence matches or exceeds that of humans — poses a severe threat. These newly-superintelligent machines could turn on their creators, we’ve been warned, like Skynet in the apocalyptic movie Terminator.

But many early predictions — fears and hopes — about how new technologies will change the world turn out to be false or misleading. Meanwhile, significant risks that arise simply from increased speed, expanded scale or lower costs that technology enables are often overlooked.

A new technology does not have to outperform humans, or even be singularly sensational compared to previous technologies, to fuel extreme turbulence and instability, usually in an unforeseen manner. Cars weren’t so transformative simply because they exceeded the speed benchmark set by horses, nor were they horseless carriages.

In this talk, Tufekci will examine the disruptive and even potentially catastrophic risks from Artificial Good-Enough Intelligence — AI that can do things not necessarily as well as humans but just good enough to be useful while being faster, cheaper and deployable at scale, and in ways that go beyond current concerns such as employment effects, productivity or bias.

About Zeynep Tufekci

Zeynep Tufekci<https://zeynep.me/> is an academic and writer who focuses on big social challenges that defy disciplinary boundaries and simple answers.

Originally from Turkey, Zeynep Tufekci writes about sociology and the social effects of technology, having closely examined the impact of and responses to the Covid pandemic. She is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University. Her research revolves around politics, civics, movements, privacy and surveillance, as well as data and algorithms.

She is the author of Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest<https://www.twitterandteargas.org/> and writes regularly for The Atlantic and the New York Times. She also publishes a newsletter named Insight<https://www.theinsight.org/>.

To Attend In-Person

Please fill out this RSVP form<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc0kzzIIW_J4t1Ug8qFPEL-cTeT19JR15bmdsdLGdpLsxpDig/viewform?usp=header> if you plan to attend in-person, as space is limited. To access the lecture virtually, please use this zoom link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/97070463196

This talk is free to the MIT community and open to the public. See the attached flyer for more details, we hope to see you there!


Thank you,
Program in Science, Technology, and Society


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Mina Hadley | MIT (she/her)
Events and Communications Assistant
Program in Science, Technology, & Society
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