Under the title “Endgame”, this session of our interdisciplinary reading group “AI and Creativity” turns from the material infrastructures of AI to the question of its agency, taking up the problems of control and autonomy that run from Asimov’s robot laws to contemporary debates on AI risk. In this fifteenth meeting, we will read:

• Isaac Asimov, “Runaround,” Astounding Science Fiction (March 1942), collected in I, Robot (1950);
• Norbert Wiener, “Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation,” Science, 131(3410), pp. 1355–1358 (1960);
• and Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All, Chapter 4, “You Don’t Get What You Train For,” pp. 51-68 (2025).

Optional materials:

• Search Engine podcast, “The Machines Are Learning to Do Crimes?”
  available from: https://www.searchengine.show/the-machines-are-learning-to-do-crimes/
• Yudkowsky and Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, Chapter 10, “A Cursed Problem,” pp. 138-150 (2025).

This group welcomes anyone interested in the intersection of technology, creativity, culture, and ethics. We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday, October 27th at 10:30 in Via Modena, room M020, and on ZOOM (link will be sent around in due time).