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Stop the World: TSD Summit Sessions on Artificial Intelligence and Catastrophic Risk with Connor Leahy

Australian Strategic Policy Institute

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Details

Date Published
11 Sept 2024
Priority Score
5
Australian
Yes
Created
8 Mar 2025, 12:37 pm

Authors (1)

Summary

The article covers a discussion with Connor Leahy, co-founder of Conjecture AI, focusing on the risks posed by artificial superintelligence. Leahy elaborates on 'cognitive emulation,' an approach aimed at realizing safe AI. The topic of how goals are set for intelligent agents and whether current AI developments, primarily large language models, can be expanded using more computational power, is central to the discussion. This piece holds relevance not only to global AI safety risks but also highlights significant contributions to the discourse through an Australian context, specifically through ASPI's Sydney Dialogue.

Body

In the first video edition of The Sydney Dialogue Summit Sessions, David Wroe sits down with Connor Leahy, co-founder and CEO of Conjecture AI. David and Connor speak about the catastrophic risks that a powerful but uncontrolled and unaligned artificial superintelligence could pose to humanity, and Conjecture’s approach to safe AI called “cognitive emulation”. They also discuss what it means for an intelligent agent to have goals, and the likelihood that the current dominant AI approach of large language models can continue to be scaled up with more computing power.Connor was a panellist at ASPI’s Sydney Dialogue cyber and tech conference held on September 2 and 3. This is the first of a series of podcasts filmed on the sidelines of the conference, which will be released in the coming weeks.Check out ASPI’sYouTube channel hereto watch the full video.