For a good example of an AI conference worth while investigating, consider the Future of Life Institute 2017 Asilomar Conference. As noted in our Draft Principles page, this conference resulted in the creation of twenty-three principles called the AI Asilomar Principles. No other group has come even close to equaling that productivity.

Here is a link to the four day Schedule for the January 2017 Asilomar conference on Beneficial AI.

The charismatic leader and founder of the Future of Life Institute is Max Tegmark, author of Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (2017). This is a must-read, intro book on AI, AI ethics and, as the title indicates, the future of life. Max is an MIT professor and cosmologist. The primary funding for his Institute is from none other than Elon Musk. The Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute is quite impressive.

Here is the opening video of Max Tegmark kicking off the 2017 Asilomar conference.

There were many talks at the conference, both keynotes and break-out sessions. Here is one of many we liked, Law and Policy Development Since 2015 by Law Professor, Ryan Calo, of the University of Washington. Some law types hate Powerpoints and apparently Ryan is one of them. Personally, we like big graphics slides. Oh well.

We conclude with a half-hour video of one of the many break-out sessions: AI and Law. No. The sad young man in the middle, Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, was not under arrest, but it looks like all of the lawyers on the panel made him nervous or something. We promise not to do that in our events. We also promise to take great pains in any event we put on to promote dialogue and interactivity, yes even friendly disagreements.

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Below is a photo of the attendees. Looks like a good interdisciplinary group, although ideally future conferences will have greater diversity.