A very short update to to direct you all to my new home at learningfromexamples.substack.com. All of my posts will be housed on Learning From Examples for the foreseeable future, where I am to write more regularly on AI history, philosophy, governance, policy & more.
I started the project because there's a (quite natural) tendency for lots of people hearing about, working on, or interested in AI to think 'nothing like this has ever been done before!', which is a response that I sympathise with given the impressive capabilities of today’s AI systems. Often, though, we have been here before (or at least somewhere similar).*
Machine learning is the dominant paradigm underpinning modern AI. It can best be summed up in three words: Learning From Examples. That very simple idea, looking at the past to predict the future, is the motivation behind this project. I’m interested in thinking about how best to maximise the potential of AI whilst minimising its risk, focusing on questions related to policy, governance, ethics, history, and more.
*Clearly, I don’t mean to say that there have been technologies with identical or even particularly similar social, economic or political loci (especially with respect to the speculated forms that AI might take in the future). What I mean to say is that for anyone interested in ethics and governance issues, our past is replete with lessons to be learned.
