Hi friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Stuart Russell, he's a professor of computer science at the University of California and an author.

Programming machines to do what we want them to is a challenge.

The consequences of getting this wrong become very grave if that machine is super intelligent with essentially limitless resources and no regard for humanity's well-being.

Stuart literally wrote the textbook on artificial intelligence which is now used in hundreds of countries.

So hopefully it's got an answer to perhaps the most important question of this century.

Today, expect to learn how AI systems have already manipulated your preferences to make you more predictable.

Why social media companies genuinely don't know what their own algorithms are doing.

Why our reliance on machines can be a weakness. Stuart's better solution for giving machines goals and much more.

I think the main takeaway from this conversation is that programming computers to do what you actually want is really, really hard.

And we don't have the luxury of getting this wrong if the computer that we're trying to program is incredibly intelligent and controlling essentially the entire world.

I'm glad that someone like Stuart is thinking about these questions because he seems to be about as qualified as you can be.

But as you'll hear, there are far fewer resources than are needed being dedicated to this area of research.

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