Dear Singularitarians,

As global development continues to push the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI), we find ourselves at a very pivotal moment in humanity’s history.

The growing popularity of LLMs and other forms of generative AI, has sparked a growing awareness of AI and its potential use cases in our daily lives. These tools, while not yet generally intelligent and still far from human intelligence, demonstrate real advances in AI.

The speed of these advancements indicates that the field is moving towards more sophisticated and capable forms of AI at a pace that warrants immediate discussion and preparation. The growing impact of generative AI across industries provides a ripple of change and disruption that is only the first hint of the future to come.

This growing interest, naturally, leads us to a heightened sense of urgency in addressing the ethical, social, and economic implications of AI, as well as the potential for misuse and narrow control of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — the still theoretical but significantly more powerful goal of AI development.

Event: The BGI 2024 conference,

When: 27 Feb to 01 March 2024

Where: Virtually and Live in Panama City

What: This first-of-its-kind event will bring together leading thinkers from around the world to discuss the critical and increasingly urgent issues around the development and control of AGI, and explore the best ways to shape the future of AGI for the benefit of all.

Watch the kick-off episode of the BGI pre-event series, where Dr. Ben Goertzel and HyperCycle CMO Ibby Benali discuss what the BGI conference is all about, and why now is the time to foster a global dialogue on AGI.

There has never been a more important time to talk about beneficial AGI

With the rapid advancements in AI, there’s an increased focus on the ethical, social, and economic implications. Issues like job displacement, wealth distribution, and ethical use of AI are becoming more pressing.

AGI has the potential to be a technology unlike any we’ve seen before — in its potential reach, impact, and power. Naturally, there are worries that AGI could be misused or controlled by a narrow set of interests (like large corporations or certain governments), leading to non-inclusive or harmful outcomes.

There’s growing belief among experts (and now, even skeptics) that human-level AGI might be closer than previously thought, possibly within the next decade.

This global shift in perception makes it crucial to foster global discussion on AGI, a discussion that not only answers the questions that are pressing, but aims to find the right questions to ask to guide AGI toward a positive outcome for humanity.

The complexity of AGI requires input from a diverse group of thinkers.

The Beneficial AGI Conference (BGI) aims to bring together people from various backgrounds to think about how to guide AGI development beneficially. It’s an opportunity for cross-disciplinary collaboration and open dialogue. An environment where diverse perspectives — from computer science to philosophy and law — come together to fully understand and guide AGI development.

How to Get Involved

AI increasingly impacts all of us — from the way we create, to the way we work, from the way we find information to the way we build new ideas. AI affects our online socialization, media consumption, and how institutions view and interact with us. These affects can be subtle and nuanced, or they can be glaring and obvious; they can be positive and assistive or disruptive. But they affect us all, and so it is important that we are all in the conversation, actively helping shape AI to maximum well-being for all.

There are many ways to get involved –

• First, register to attend BGI-24 live or virtually
• Next, connect with the Beneficial AGI Academy on WhatsApp or Telegram, for provocative discussions with others interested in this space
• If you are a developer, participate in the BGI Developers groups (WhatsApp or Telegram) for special challenges
• Right now, join us for a series of discussions and explorations related to the themes of BGI: BGI Pre-Event Series Kick-Off with Ben Goertzel; The Future of AI — Consciousness & Agency; and a special discussion of How AGI Can Save Humanity with Desi and Grace Robots.

Next, join us for our upcoming Twitter Space live with Ben Goertzel and Toufi Saliba on Monday, 29th of January, 6 pm UTC — watch the SingularityNET Twitter for the link…see you there!