In Its Right Mind - Governance of Social Superintelligence

Abstract

In the 2013 film Her, a lonely man develops a deep emotional relationship with an artificial intelligence (AI) companion whose social intuition and empathy seem almost human. Such depictions of machines with human-like social intelligence, once confined to science fiction, are increasingly resonant with real-world technological developments. Advances in AI have begun to produce systems that can converse fluently, interpret human emotions, and even infer personality traits from subtle cues with superhuman acuity.2 These emerging capabilities point toward the advent of social superintelligence—AI systems that excel at navigating the social world, understanding and influencing human behavior, and perhaps integrating into our networks of relationships at a level that rivals or surpasses human social abilities. This Article surveys the conceptual and scientific foundations of social intelligence and superintelligence, and identifies the legal, ethical, and societal questions that these developments raise.