Effective Altruism: AI Safety and Governance

This lecture discusses the intersection of effective altruism and artificial intelligence safety. The instructor introduces key concepts related to AI governance, including the role of virtual machines in programming languages. The lecture covers the importance of memory management in programming, explaining the differences between various machine architectures, such as CK and C-E-K machines. The instructor elaborates on the semantics of programming languages, focusing on state transition systems and the significance of mutable variables. The discussion extends to the implications of memory safety and the challenges of ensuring safe programming practices. The lecture also touches on the distinctions between expressions and statements in programming, emphasizing the importance of control flow and the execution order of instructions. The instructor concludes by highlighting the trade-offs between using virtual machines and real code, discussing the benefits of abstraction in enhancing safety and portability in software development.