by Huw Price 

Presentation and History

Our mission at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) is to build a new interdisciplinary community of researchers, with strong links to technologists and the policy world, and a clear practical goal –– to work together to ensure that we humans make the best of the opportunities of artificial intelligence (AI) as it develops over coming decades. 

We launched in October 2016, and are based at the University of Cambridge, with partners at the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford, at Imperial College London, and at the University of California, Berkeley. Our core funding is a 10-year £10 million grant from the Leverhulme Trust, under its Major Research Centre programme. 

Research Activities

Our research is mostly structured in a series of projects –– currently ten in all. All of them are interdisciplinary, and most span more than one institution, or have other external partners. Some have a strong technical focus –– for example, how to align AI reliably with human values, or how to ensure that machine learning systems are fair, trustworthy, and interpretable, in the sense that their decisions are understandable in human-explicable terms. Some, such as projects on AI and democracy, and on the narratives we bring to our thinking about AI, lie primarily in the social sciences and humanities. And some lie at the intersection between science and philosophy –– philosophy of science is very well represented. Each project has an academic leader, and most employ one or more PDRAs. 

In addition to the research conducted by each of these projects, they serve a practical function. They are the 'root structure' of CFI's new community, reaching out to brilliant researchers in many fields, and connecting them and their ideas to the challenges of making the best of AI. 

Connecting to CFI

We welcome new projects, partners, and collaborations, and applications from Visiting Scholars. Please see our website for contact details, and for further information about our projects and events. 

Huw Price is Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and Academic Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.