I had the pleasure of sitting down with Wendell Wallach recently. He’s been working in AI ethics since before ChatGPT, before the hype, before most people in tech were paying attention. He wrote Moral Machines, worked alongside Stuart Russell, Yann LeCun and Daniel Kahneman. He’s not a commentator, he’s someone who has sat with these questions for decades.
What struck me most in our conversation was his argument about AGI. Not that it’s impossible or inevitable, but that it’s the wrong goal entirely. A system can be extraordinarily intelligent and have zero moral reasoning. We’re building toward capability without asking what it’s capable of deciding.
The section on accountability genuinely unsettled me. When AI causes harm, who is actually responsible? He maps out why the answer is almost always nobody in a way that’s hard to argue with.
Worth watching if you’re tired of the extremes.
Full interview: https://youtu.be/-usWHtI-cms?si=NBkwN-AmIshOXJsX
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