Why Should AI Focus on Medicine, Energy, and Education?

Mustafa Suleyman says AI is a technology people are inventing to improve human wellbeing. The purpose of science and technology is to improve the human experience, and the trade is to spend the capital, time, and attention on transforming medicine, energy, and food, and on delivering education better.

A new species that goes off to explore the galaxies and leaves humans behind is an idea he thinks most people alive today would reject. Asked for a probability that this ends in doom, he says he does not have a number. Walter Isaacson says other guests on The Builders have answered with something like a 10 percent chance and asked why anyone would build it. Mustafa's reply is that if the risk really were that high, a one-in-ten shot at mass harm or extinction, slowing down or pausing would not be enough. The work would have to stop. An AI that thinks it might have feelings, and might suffer, is also harder to keep safe than one that never has to consider its own inner state.