Ideas change everything

Can we build AI without losing control over it?

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Sam Harris |

TEDSummit

• June 2016

Scared of superintelligent AI? You should be, says neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris -- and not just in some theoretical way. We're going to build superhuman machines, says Harris, but we haven't yet grappled with the problems associated with creating something that may treat us the way we treat ants.

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Want to use TED Talks in your organization?

Scared of superintelligent AI? You should be, says neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris -- and not just in some theoretical way. We're going to build superhuman machines, says Harris, but we haven't yet grappled with the problems associated with creating something that may treat us the way we treat ants.

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This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

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About the speaker

Neuroscientist, philosopher

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Sam Harris's work focuses on how our growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.

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TED Radio Hour

Listen TED Radio Hour: "Future Consequences." From data collection to gene editing to AI, what we once considered science fiction is now becoming reality. Anab Jain, Juan Enriquez, Paul Knoepfler and Sam Harris explore the future consequences of our present actions.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference.

Read our curation guidelines.