God-Like AI Is Closer Than You Think. Aaron Meets Ian Hogarth

Ian Hogarth has invested in more than 50 artificial intelligence companies and is co-author of the annual “State of AI” report. And he’s worried. Not only in regard to the immensely disruptive consequences of machine learning for employment, as AI automates potentially millions of jobs, but with the potential rise of an ‘AGI’ (an artificial general intelligence). For Hogarth, the prospect of a machine able to augment its own intelligence is of grave concern – and something which, so far, political elites have ignored.

So what could the emergence of an AGI mean? And how soon before it arrives – if at all? How important is quantum computing? And does the existence of these technologies within the broader framework of capitalism mitigate or amplify risks? Could AI operate more effectively under a different kind of economic system, and will its diffusion herald a break with capitalism as we know it?