Abstract

Abstract

We call them servants. What if they are our heirs? If humanity is not the final form of intelligence, then are we merely the biological launchpad for our true successors?

On one hand, we will investigate scenarios not of metallic armies, but of silent, systemic obsolescence. A world where AI is the new apex predator in the cognitive niche—where it not only writes all the essays for our supervisions and summarises that pesky library book that might take days to read; but also dispenses justice, proves the theorems, prescribes the cultural narrative and redefines how homo sapiens interacts in love, sex and death. In this future, humanity is not exterminated; it becomes simply… irrelevant.

On the other hand, the talk will explore the ultimate catastrophic risks: advanced AI systems surpassing human-level intelligence and evading their creators’ control for their incomprehensible (to us, at least) purposes. We will move beyond clichéd debates on ‘alignment’ and ‘ethics’ to present a provocative framework of outcomes for how this “evitable journey” can be, and must be, rerouted before the servants lock the door from the inside.

About the speaker:

Demetrius A. Floudas is a Visiting Scholar in Law at Downing College.

He is an AI Expert at the European Institute of Public Administration and will join the Cambridge University Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence next month. He has recently been retained as Head of Engagement in preparing a UN-backed International AI Risk Mitigation Treaty, the first-of-its-kind International Instrument globally. He served as a member of the drafting Plenary and WG2 +3 of EU AI Office’s Code of Practice for General-Purpose Artificial Intelligence (to come in force later in 2025). He has contributed policy-enhancing solutions to UNESCO Guidelines for Use of AI in Courts & Tribunals, the OECD risk thresholds for advanced AI, CNIL , and others.

In Cambridge, he is Visiting Scholar at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence; Member of the AI@Cam (the University’s Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Unit), Visiting Scholar in Law at Downing College; Senior Adviser to the Cambridge Existential Risk Initiative; and Trustee of the University’s Student Union.

As Afl. Professor at Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, he has been lecturing on ‘AI Regulation’ since 2022 – pre GPT - making him one of the first academics on the planet to design, curate and deliver an AI Law module…