For Max Tegmark, last week’s artificial intelligence summit at Bletchley Park was an emotional moment. The MIT professor and AI researcher was behind a letter this year calling for a pause in development of advanced systems. It didn’t happen, but it was a crucial contribution to the political and academic momentum that resulted in the Bletchley gathering.
“[The summit] has actually made me more optimistic. It really has superseded my expectations,” he told me. “I’ve been working for about 10 years, hoping that one day there would be an international summit on AI safety. Seeing it happen with my own eyes – and done so surprisingly well – was very moving.”
