Protecting Against AI’s Existential Threat

How to avoid the nightmare scenario of artificial intelligence? According to researchers from Elon Musk’s OpenAI, the trick is teaching machines to keep our interests in mind

On July 8, 2017, an AI system built by our research company, OpenAI, beat a semipro human player in solo matches of a battle arena video game called Dota 2. One month later, the same AI system beat a professional gamer ranked in the top 50. Three days after that it defeated the No. 1 solo Dota 2 player in the world. And it kept getting better: The Aug. 11 version of our AI beat the Aug. 10 version 60% of the time. Our AI learned to trick its opponents, predict what it couldn’t see and decide when to fight and when to flee.

Keeping a Careful Eye on AI

How do you create AI that doesn’t pose a threat to humanity? By teaching it to work with humans. Open AI collaborated with DeepMind, Google’s AI division, to design a training method that incorporates regular human feedback. The idea is to “humanize” AI...