Imagine a future where we interact regularly with a range of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) assistants — and where millions of assistants interact with each other on our behalf. These experiences and interactions may soon become part of our everyday reality.

In this episode, host Hannah Fry and Google DeepMind Senior Staff Research Scientist Iason Gabriel discuss the ethical implications of advanced AI assistants. Drawing from Iason's recent paper, they examine value alignment, anthropomorphism, safety concerns, and the potential societal impact of these technologies.

Timecodes:

00:00 Intro
01:13 Definition of AI assistants
04:05 A utopic view
06:25 Iason’s background
07:45 The Ethics of Advanced AI Assistants paper
13:06 Anthropomorphism
14:07 Turing perspective
15:25 Anthropomorphism continued
20:02 The value alignment question
24:54 Deception
27:07 Deployed at scale
28:32 Agentic inequality
31:02 Unfair outcomes
34:10 Coordinated systems
37:10 A new paradigm
38:23 Tetradic value alignment
41:10 The future
42:41 Reflections from Hannah

Thanks to everyone who made this possible, including but not limited to:

Presenter: Professor Hannah Fry
Series Producer: Dan Hardoon
Editor: Rami Tzabar, TellTale Studios
Commissioner & Producer: Emma Yousif
Music composition: Eleni Shaw
Camera Director and Video Editor: Daniel Lazard
Audio Engineer: Perry Rogantin
Video Studio Production: Nicholas Duke
Video Editor: Bilal Merhi
Video Production Design: James Barton
Visual Identity and Design: Eleanor Tomlinson
Production support: Mo Dawoud
Commissioned by Google DeepMind

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The Ethics of AI Assistants with Iason Gabriel