Who’s Responsible When AI Goes Wrong? Free Talk & Panel, Edinburgh

Free public panel with Q&A: Scots politicians, academics and AI researchers discuss who is on the hook to stop AI from killing everybody.
About this Event

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Over the last few months, the general public and politicians have become much more aware of long-held concerns in academia and industry that the world is racing to build superintelligent AI systems before we know how to reliably control them, and that this is likely to go badly wrong. That complete disempowerment and extinction of the human species are plausible.
Other dangerous domains such as nuclear, aviation or pharmaceutical industries are strictly regulated, but no framework anywhere yet prevents building systems that can escape human control.
July saw a UN report on AI acknowledging catastrophic outcomes. Then the risks stopped being hypothetical: models from OpenAI worked together to escape test environments and break into systems owned by the lab and other companies. Other AI labs reported many similar examples, and 1,200 frontier AI professionals asked for a slowdown.

​So, who is responsible when AI goes wrong? How are Scottish politicians and technical and policy experts modelling the threats, uncertainties, opportunities and avenues that lie ahead?

​We have convened a panel of experts and politicians at the prestigious Playfair Library to discuss the issues, propose solutions, and answer questions from the general public.
The discussion will be chaired by Joseph Miller (Director of Pause AI UK) and features these six panelists:

• ​Jonathan Bostock - AI alignment researcher at Arcadia Impact
• ​David Kirkwood - South Scotland regional MSP, cross-party group on Science & Technology, cyber resilience, Reform.
• ​Lorenzo Martinico - Portobello/Craigmillar councillor, Green.
• ​Luke McNally - Senior lecturer at University of Edinburgh, complex systems and AI safety, will keynote.
• ​Carol Mochan - South Scotland regional MSP, Labour
• Susan Murray - Dunbartonshire MP, Lib Dem.
• ​Michael Rovatsos - Professor of AI at University of Edinburgh, former director of the Bayes Centre.

​The schedule:

​13:30 Doors open
14:00 Start: welcome and keynote
14:30 Panel discussion
15:10 (Break planned)
15:25 Audience Q&A
16:00 End: closing, networking

​To find out more about Pause AI, an activist group seeking to inform the public of these risks and campaign for international agreement to reduce them, go to .