The real issue with artificial intelligence: The misalignment problem

Breathtaking advances in technology, from genetic engineering to quantum computing, have opened policy vistas and security challenges that were completely unanticipated even five years ago. The next decade will bring smaller devices, larger networks and anthropomorphic computers that will extend human thought — where they don't replace human thought — beyond, literally, imagination or belief. Although AI-doomsday forecasts designed to stoke public anxiety make great headlines and popular podcasts, from the perspective of many Ph.D.-level scientists and engineers the life-under-borg predictions are strangely overwrought. One of the reasons artificial intelligence (AI) captures so much attention is that it, like satellite…