Decision Theory for AI safety

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• Richard Ngo (University of Cambridge)
• Wednesday 07 February 2018, 17:00-18:30
• Cambridge University Engineering Department, CBL Seminar room BE4-38. For directions see http://learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/Public/Directions.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Adrià Garriga Alonso.

Decision theory is the study of how rational agents should act in idealised situations. While it has important implications for the design and analysis of AI agents, there are still major unresolved problems. The two leading decision theories – Causal Decision Theory and Evidential Decision Theory – both seem to fail in some cases. Functional Decision Theory, an alternative proposed by researchers at MIRI , has some appealing properties but remains underspecified. In this talk I will explore the importance of decision theory to AI safety, explain the three theories mentioned above, and evaluate various objections which have been raised, and responses to them.

You can read more about the topic here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05060

Talk slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hoXUiEbGhzGcC2JkmcMPEpXgXL0Rj19hQdJn46zv1H8/edit#slide=id.p

https://valuealignment.ml/talks/2018-02-07-decision-theory-ai-safety.pdf

This talk is part of the Engineering Safe AI series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cambridge University Engineering Department, CBL Seminar room BE4-38. For directions see http://learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/Public/Directions
• Cambridge talks
• Chris Davis' list
• Engineering Safe AI
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events

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