The end is nigh – or is it?
When most people start screaming that the sky is falling, they can safely be ignored. But Eliezer Yudkowsky is not most people. He was one of the first to take the idea of superintelligent AI – artificial intelligence that greatly surpasses humanity – seriously. He played a role in introducing the founders of Google DeepMind to their first funder; and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, credited Yudkowsky as a man who was ‘critical in the decision’ to start the organisation. His influence goes still further – he was a key thinker motivating the effective altruism movement and its founders, and the wider rationalist movement to which they belonged. Through
