MIRI's November 2013 Newsletter - Machine Intelligence Research Institute

Dear friends,

We’re experimenting with a new, ultra-brief newsletter style. To let us know what you think of it, simply reply to this email. Thanks!

News Updates

You can now support MIRI for free by shopping at smile.amazon.com instead of amazon.com. Update your bookmarks!
Louie Helm will be onsite for the Nov. 24th Marin county screening of Doug Wolens’ new documentary The Singularity. Details on this and other screenings are here.

Research Updates

New paper: “Embryo Selection for Cognitive Enhancement.” (Including a description of iterated embryo selection.)
New analysis: “From Philosophy to Math to Engineering.” (How we see research progress.)
Eliezer Yudkowsky gave a talk at MIT, but unfortunately MIT failed to record the video as scheduled. A later delivery of the talk may be recorded and released in the next few months.
Paul Christiano gave a talk at Harvard about probabilistic metamathematics. Video here.
Two surveys of what others have written about risks from AGI: Richard Posner (the most-cited legal scholar of the 20th century) and Stuart Russell & Peter Norvig (authors of the #1 AI textbook).
Several new expert interviews: Ben Goertzel (Novamente) on AGI as a field, Hadi Esmaeilzadeh (GIT) on dark silicon’s threat to Moore’s Law, Bas Steunebrink (IDSIA) on self-reflective programming, Markus Schmidt (Biofaction) on risks from novel biotechnologies, Robin Hanson (GMU) on “serious futurism,” and Greg Morrisett (Harvard) on secure and reliable systems.

Other Updates

Many of our friends have said Louie Helm’s Rockstar Research is among their favorite new sources of news; check it out!
Know an exceptionally bright, ambitious person younger than 20? Tell them to apply for The Thiel Fellowship! $100,000 to skip college and develop one’s skills and ideas, with an incredible network of mentors in the Bay Area.
CFAR has upcoming rationality workshops in February (Melbourne), March (Bay Area), and April (NYC). Tell your friends!

Cheers,

Luke Muehlhauser
Executive Director

MIRI’s November 2013 Newsletter