The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values

Over the last five years, the field of machine learning has experienced incredibly rapid growth, and with that growth have come increasing concerns about potential harms, both present and near-future. High-profile successes have alternated with equally high-profile failures and controversies, and questions of ethics and safety have shifted from being somewhat taboo to comprising one of the central topics of the field. Out of this has come something of a movement: a vibrant, multifaceted, interdisciplinary effort producing some of the most exciting research happening today. Brian Christian, the Simons Institute's Scientific Communicator in Residence and author of the acclaimed bestsellers The Most Human Human and Algorithms to Live By, will survey this landscape of recent progress and the frontier of open questions that remain. 

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