A philosopher, a scientist and a software engineer have come
together to propose a new centre at Cambridge to address developments in human
technologies that might pose “extinction-level” risks to our species, from
biotechnology to artificial intelligence.
In 1965, Irving John ‘Jack’ Good sat down and wrote a paper
for New Scientist called Speculations concerning the first ultra-intelligent
machine. Good, a Cambridge-trained mathematician, Bletchley Park cryptographer,
pioneering computer scientist and friend of Alan Turing, wrote that in the near
future an ultra-intelligent machine would be built.