Machine Intelligence Research Institute

History

In 2000, Eliezer Yudkowsky founded the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence with funding from Brian and Sabine Atkins, with the purpose of accelerating the development of artificial intelligence (AI).

Starting in 2006, the Institute organized the Singularity Summit to discuss the future of AI including its risks, initially in cooperation with Stanford University and with funding from Peter Thiel. The San Francisco Chronicle described the first conference as a "Bay Area coming-out party for the tech-inspired philosophy called transhumanism". In 2011, its offices were four apartments in downtown Berkeley. In December 2012, the institute sold its name, web domain, and the Singularity Summit to Singularity University, and in the following month took the name "Machine Intelligence Research Institute".

In 2014 and 2015, public and scientific interest in the risks of AI grew, increasing donations to fund research at MIRI and similar organizations.

In 2019, Open Philanthropy recommended a general-support grant of approximately $2.1 million over two years to MIRI. In April 2020, Open Philanthropy supplemented this with a $7.7M grant over two years.

In 2021, Vitalik Buterin donated several million dollars' worth of Ethereum to MIRI.

Research and approach

MIRI's approach to identifying and managing the risks of AI, led by Yudkowsky, primarily addresses how to design friendly AI, covering both the initial design of AI systems and the creation of mechanisms to ensure that evolving AI systems remain friendly.

MIRI researchers advocate early safety work as a precautionary measure. However, MIRI researchers have expressed skepticism about the views of singularity advocates like Ray Kurzweil that superintelligence is "just around the corner". MIRI has funded forecasting work through an initiative called AI Impacts, which studies historical instances of discontinuous technological change, and has developed new measures of the relative computational power of humans and computer hardware.

MIRI aligns itself with the principles and objectives of the effective altruism movement.

Works by MIRI staff

References

References

1. (11 October 2015). "MIRI: Artificial Intelligence: The Danger of Good Intentions - Future of Life Institute". Future of Life Institute.
2. "The Doomsday Invention".
3. "Timeline of Machine Intelligence Research Institute - Timelines".
4. Abate, Tom. (2006). "Smarter than thou?". [[San Francisco Chronicle]].
5. Abate, Tom. (2007). "Public meeting will re-examine future of artificial intelligence". [[San Francisco Chronicle]].
6. (January 11, 2011). "The Singularity: Humanity's Last Invention?". All Things Considered, NPR.
7. (9 December 2012). "Press release: Singularity University Acquires the Singularity Summitt". Singularity University.
8. (30 January 2013). "Press release: We are now the "Machine Intelligence Research Institute" (MIRI) - Machine Intelligence Research Institute". Machine Intelligence Research Institute.
9. (2017). "[[Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence]]". [[Anchor Books.
10. (2019-03-29). "Machine Intelligence Research Institute — General Support (2019)".
11. (10 March 2020). "Machine Intelligence Research Institute — General Support (2020)". Open Philanthropy Project.
12. Bensinger, Rob. (April 27, 2020). "MIRI's largest grant to date!". MIRI.
13. Maheshwari, Suyash. (2021-05-13). "Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin donates $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency to India COVID Relief Fund & other charities".
14. (31 October 2014). "Artificial intelligence: machine v man". Financial Times.
15. LaFrance, Adrienne. (2015). "Building Robots With Better Morals Than Humans". [[The Atlantic]].
16. (2009). "[[Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach]]". Prentice Hall.
17. (4 January 2016). "The Most Important Philosophers of Our Time Reside in Silicon Valley".
18. Hsu, Jeremy. (2015). "Making Sure AI's Rapid Rise Is No Surprise". [[Discover (magazine).
19. (2015-08-28). "AI and Effective Altruism".