Of Myths And Moonshine
An essay by Stuart Russell, Edge.org, dated 2014. The Edge conversation page dates the conversation 14 November 2014; the Reality Club responses carry no dates of their own, so only the year is given.
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- Of Myths And Moonshine (response by Stuart Russell, in "The Myth of AI", Reality Club discussion) Edge.org, conversation page "The Myth of AI" (Jaron Lanier, dated 14 November 2014), Reality Club discussion · published 2014 · Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-10-29 (SHA-256 6ea0800c969ae54c4fad372468aa5a9a557b4d25a081bee9b26d51048fd8d159). current Edge.org conversation page retrieved 2026-10-29 (the page states that the site is hosted by the Internet Archive); responses carry no individual dates. The cross-family check retrieved it again on 2026-10-31; the bytes differ, and the check compared the quoted passages. The cross-family check of 2026-10-31 found Russell's quoted passages absent from the captures of 18 and 21 November 2014 and present in the capture of 6 December 2014.Archived copy, captured 2014-12-06: Of Myths And Moonshine (response by Stuart Russell, in "The Myth of AI", Reality Club discussion). An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2014-12-06. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-29.
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- Arguments about catastrophic risk from advanced AI →3 records on this document
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Cites · 1
Explicit references in this document. Citation is neither agreement nor influence.
- Artificial intelligence is a tool, not a threatRussell's Edge response of 2014 replies to Brooks's response in the same discussion, which it names, on the timescale of technological breakthroughs.2014 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Brooks, Artificial intelligence is a tool, not a threat (2014): document page →
Articulates · 2
Propositions whose criterion a passage of this document meets. The record says what the text states, in its register; it is not evidence that the proposition is true.
- Instrumental convergenceRussell's Edge response of 2014 states that any sufficiently capable intelligent system will prefer to ensure its own continued existence and to acquire physical and computational resources, not for their own sake but to succeed in its assigned task.2014 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Instrumental convergence: propositions page →
- Difficulty of alignmentRussell's Edge response of 2014 states that a system's utility function may not be aligned with human values, which are very difficult to pin down, that this is not a minor difficulty, and that AI research, which has aimed at better decisions whatever the utility function, needs to change its goals to building intelligence provably aligned with human values.2014 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Difficulty of alignment: propositions page →
Contests · 1
Propositions a passage of this document disputes, or a premise they depend on.
- Risk claims are speculative or unfalsifiableRussell's Edge response of 2014, answering Brooks, argues that the time from authoritative statements of impossibility to a breakthrough can be hours rather than centuries, and that a convincing argument for a more-than-infinitesimal possibility of catastrophe is enough, without proof.2014 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Risk claims are speculative or unfalsifiable: propositions page →
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