Prospects for Peace in AI

PROSPECT FOR PEACE IN AI

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DR EMILE P. TORRES

TOPIC: Prospects for Peace in the AI Arms Race Between China and the US -- Silicon Valley researchers working to build artificial general intelligence, or AGI, have repeatedly justified their efforts by arguing that whoever builds the first AGI will rule the world, and that if the US doesn’t build AGI first, China will. This has contributed to an unfolding race between the US and China, which could have disastrous consequences. We will explore this arms race and examine how it could destabilize the balance of geopolitical power in the coming years.

BIO:  Dr. Torres is a moral philosopher, intellectual historian, and journalist whose work focuses on the ethics of emerging technologies, especially AI, and human extinction. They have published four books, the most recent of which is Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation (Routledge 2024). In 2023, with Dr. Timnit Gebru, they coined the acronym “TESCREAL” to denote a constellation of ideologies that have become very influential within Silicon Valley. These ideologies have played an integral role in launching, sustaining, and accelerating the current race to build artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which TESCREAL advocates believe will usher in a utopian world of immortality, endless abundance, and space colonization—that is, unless “God-like AI” annihilates us instead. Torres has published in a wide range of academic journals, including Synthese, Inquiry, Bioethics, Metaphilosophy, and Futures, and delivered invited talks at UNICEF and the UK government’s Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation. They have also published frequently in popular media outlets like The Washington Post, New Statesman, Los Angeles Review of Books, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Aeon. They are a contributing writer at Truthdig and, formerly, Salon.