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Ai Salon: Trustworthy AI Futures [Vancouver]
We imagined AI as apocalypse or utopia. What if it’s neither?
How do we adapt to the messy middle?
A major faction within the AI community holds the view that fast takeoff is imminent: AI systems rapidly and recursively improving themselves to superintelligence in a short time. If fast takeoff is to be expected, the greatest risk would be misalignment.
However, as artificial intelligence seeps deeper into the fabric of everyday life, a different perspective is emerging—one that treats AI not as an alien intelligence or existential threat, but as a powerful, ambient utility: a kind of cognitive electricity.
If AI becomes a “normal technology,” embedded in everything from infrastructure to decision systems, then the challenge isn’t just controlling it—it’s learning how to live with it. If this is accurate, then the risks are less about catastrophic misalignment and more about unequal access, runaway inequality, and institutional ossification.
What if it's not an alien mind? Nor just another tool? Something in between. Entangled with everything.
This salon will explores the different kinds of futuristic scenarios we can currently envision, and how best to prepare. We’ll also entertain open questions at the frontier:
What risks remain if AI progresses at a much slower, gradual pace, rather than accelerating towards the singularity?
What happens when general or superintelligent systems make contact with the messy, slow, uneven reality of real-world deployment?
Are we to expect discontinuous leaps in intelligence and capability? Why or why not?
In a world where AI capabilities continue to emerge unpredictably, what does it mean to prepare—not just for the extremes, but for the everyday?
Read our substack of previous events in this series:
The Ai Salon is a community founded in San Francisco focused on intimate, small-sized group discussions on the sociological, economic, cultural, and philosophical impacts and meaning of AI developments. We host small group discussions, all of which you can find on our calendar. You can find summaries of our previous conversations on our substack.
We wait until the week before the event to approve guests and cannot approve everyone due to space constraints. If you aren't approved we hope to see you at another event! Please show up on time so that conversations can flow smoothly.