Bio
Dan MacKinlay is a research scientist with the Alignment of Complex Systems Research Group, whose academic arm is based at the Center for Theoretical Study at Charles University in Prague, and a co-founder of the Alignment Journal, which studies the relationship between humans and advanced AI. He works on the group’s Gradual Disempowerment program, which studies how incremental automation could erode human influence over the economy, the state, and culture. Most analyses of AI risk focus on the flashy, such as sudden takeover or disaster, or the tractable, such as the labor economics of automation. They neglect the political and cultural dynamics. These matter because economies, states, and cultures have served human interests largely because they depend on human participation. As AI replaces people, that dependence weakens. The leverage we might use to correct one system is eroded by the others, since economic power buys policy and shapes opinion. The result could be a permanent loss of human influence. He previously worked at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, on principled uses of AI in scientific research. Before that, he lived in Indonesia, remixing Bandung death metal with the band Ensemble Tikoro.