Kevin Bankston: Alright, it is one o’clock so we’re going to get start­ed. Hi, and wel­come the New America for today’s event, ​“What Sci-Fi Futures Can (and Can’t) Teach Us About AI Policy.” I’m Kevin Bankston. I’m the direc­tor of New America’s Open Technology Institute and the co-lead of a project called AI Policy Futures that we’re doing in con­junc­tion with our friends at Arizona State University Center for Science and the Imagination. My co-lead in this project is stand­ing right beside me. He’s Ed Finn, the Director of that cen­ter. And I’m going to let him tell you a lit­tle bit about our project before we get start­ed with today’s content. 

Ed Finn: Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for join­ing us. So, AI Policy Futures is a research effort to explore the rela­tion­ship between sci­ence fic­tion around AI and the social imag­i­nar­ies of AI. What those social mea­sures can teach us about real tech­nol­o­gy pol­i­cy today. We seem to tell the same few sto­ries about AI, and they’re not very help­ful. They’re sto­ries about killer robots or super­in­tel­li­gence, and we’re talk­ing about that and miss­ing the boat on things like air­planes that are falling out of the sky, and autonomous vehi­cles and all sorts of things that are in the very near future going to impact our lives in very pow­er­ful ways. 

So, this project is going to cre­ate a tax­on­o­my of dif­fer­ent ver­sions of AI, visions of AI, in the glob­al lit­er­a­ture of sci­ence fic­tion and see how we can apply that to com­mis­sion orig­i­nal sto­ries to be pub­lished in Slate that will explore real-world, use­ful fic­tions about the near future of AI. This is sup­port­ed by the Hewlett Foundation and Google. We’re real­ly delight­ed to be able to have this event and to con­tin­ue this work with all of you. Thank you.

Kevin Bankston: The Sci-Fi Feedback Loop

Kevin Bankston, Miranda Bogen, Rumman Chowdhury, Elana Zeide, and Lindsey Sheppard: AI in Reality

Kanta Dihal: How Sci-Fi Reflects Our AI Hopes and Fears

Madeline Ashby (record­ed provocation),
Andrew Hudson, Kanta Dihal, Chris Noessel, Lee Konstantinou, and Damien Williams: AI in Sci-Fi

Chris Noessel: Untold AI – What AI Stories Should We Be Telling Ourselves?

Stephanie Dinkins/Bina48 (record­ed provocation),
Ed Finn, Malka Older, Ashkan Soltani, Kristin Sharp, Molly Write Steenson: Bridging AI Fact and Fiction

Ed Finn: I have a cou­ple of clos­ing remarks, and I rec­og­nize that I’m the last thing stand­ing between you and our reception. 

So, the first thing I’m gonna do is share what one of the…we’re fig­ur­ing out this project as we go, this AI Policy Futures thing, and we’re con­tin­u­ing to look for new direc­tions to take it, new part­ners, and new ways to com­mu­ni­cate. So, as part of our gath­er­ing today we came up with a bunch of ideas for orig­i­nal sci­ence fic­tion sto­ries that we’re going to be com­mis­sion­ing over the next year or so. 

But anoth­er thing we did is we con­duct­ed a bunch of inter­views at an event we had at South by Southwest a few months ago. And we have the raw mate­ri­als for a pod­cast. And now all we need is for some­body to give us some more mon­ey so we can make the pod­cast. But we did make a teas­er for the pod­cast, which I’m going to play for you, to entice you all to come up with bril­liant ways for us to bring this thing to life. So I’m hop­ing we can play this pod­cast teas­er. If it’s… Maybe my mag­i­cal pow­ers— [record­ing starts playing]

So, if you are inter­est­ed in talk­ing more about that or get­ting involved in the project in any oth­er way please feel free to chat with me or Kevin. 

And I want to close just very briefly. My provo­ca­tion to you, since you’ve been promised a provo­ca­tion, is that when we talk about AI we get hung up this word ​“intel­li­gence,” right. We don’t real­ly know what intel­li­gence is. We’ve nev­er real­ly known. And all of our anx­i­eties about AI are bound up in the way that this opens up the deep, exis­ten­tial of what it is to be human.

And so, the oth­er relat­ed word is that word ​“imag­i­na­tion.” And every­thing that we’re talk­ing about here is how we can use our imag­i­na­tion to build a bet­ter path­way, to chart a bet­ter course, around all of the ways that intel­li­gent machines and learn­ing machines are already chang­ing the world. Already deeply impli­cat­ed in the fab­ric of our every­day lives. 

And so, if we’re going to do any­thing about AI and devel­op­ing a bet­ter set of approach­es to our con­ver­sa­tions around AI, pol­i­cy around AI, we have to start with that word ​“imag­i­na­tion.” We have to take it on as a ques­tion for our­selves, how do we imag­ine the future? A future where there’s a new mir­ror. A new set of sys­tems that reflect our­selves back to our­selves. That post the ques­tion to us. That throw our anx­i­eties about iden­ti­ty, and belong­ing, and per­son­hood back at us in all sorts of dif­fer­ent ways. Because we can’t help but see our­selves in all of our tools and systems.

So, with that I will thank you once again for join­ing us, and turn things over to Kevin.

Kevin Bankston: And I will thank you Ed, and Andrew for the trail­blaz­ing work y’all have done at the Center for Science and the Imagination to help cat­alyze and solid­i­fy a grow­ing com­mu­ni­ty of prac­tice that is tak­ing sci­ence fic­tion seri­ous­ly as a tool for think­ing about the future of tech­nol­o­gy and the future of pol­i­cy. Applied sci-fi, you might call it, or prac­ti­cal sci-fi. Everything we’ve been doing this event, this project, the Sci-Fi House at South by Southwest, has been all about try­ing to build a com­mu­ni­ty around that idea? And I want to thank first off all of the pan­elists and speak­ers for being a part of that com­mu­ni­ty. And I want to thank you the audi­ence for being a part of that com­mu­ni­ty in join­ing us today. So, thank you, and please enjoy the reception.