Agents, Consciousness, and the Future of AI

AI is moving from autocomplete to autopilot. These systems are no longer just suggesting courses of action; they’re acting on our behalf, trading in markets, making decisions, and pursuing goals. Soon, millions of AI agents will be transacting faster than any human can track, and we may find ourselves creating as much for machine audiences as human ones. Join us for a conversation with Tyler Cowen, a George Mason economist and prolific author, moderated by Professor Jonathan Zittrain, as we wrestle with far-reaching topics, such as what autonomous AI means for markets, creativity, and our conception of consciousness.

Speakers

Tyler Cowen is currently a professor of economics at George Mason University. He has edited the volume Public Goods and Market Failures, and has written Explorations in the New Monetary Economics with Randall Kroszner. His most recent book, The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream was published January 2017. Tyler writes a column for Bloomberg View and contributes daily to The MarginalRevolution blog.

Jonathan Zittrain is the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Director of the Harvard Law School Library, and Co-Founder of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.