Aperture Book of the Month - July 2024

Stuart Russell speaks with authority about the potential for and the challenges of artificial intelligence. Having served as Vice-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s council on AI and robotics as well as having founded the Center for Human Compatible AI at the University of California, Berkeley he takes a slightly different view of the human-machine relationship of the future from that of other experts in the field, such as Mustafa Suleyman and Nick Bostrom. Russell’s ‘Human Compatible’ is the Aperture Strategy book of the month for July 2024.

The World Economic Forum is reported to have identified nearly three hundred separate efforts to develop ethical principles for AI.  Whilst much of the discussion focuses on enforcement controls to avoid what is seen as existential risk, Russell advocates an approach based on ‘inverse reinforcement learning’. This involves machines learning about human preferences and boundaries and satisfy those as their purpose rather than optimising more hard-wired objectives. Russell’s thesis rests on allowing for uncertainty in the specification of objectives, on implicit rather than explicit definition of purpose, which may be counter-intuitive to many. It explores how AI interacts with society, economics, politics, and ethics, emphasising the complex interplay between elements, and focusing on the whole rather than individual components.

Russell’s systems-thinking perspective offers a nuanced analysis of the challenges and opportunities posed by AI, and an insightful lens through which to view this complex issue. Echoing many of his colleagues, Russell acknowledges that such a philosophy should be adopted in short-order if it is to influence the accelerating implementation of AI technology, but that resolution seems to be cultural, not technical. For our small part, this certainly chimes with our own recent experience of research in AI support to systems-based strategy design. We highly recommend Russell’s book, which is even more compelling now than when it was published five years ago.