Knut Selmer Memorial Lecture 2025

In collaboration with SERI, we are pleased to invite you to this year’s Knut Selmer Memorial Lecture.
The event is open to everyone!

Advanced AI and the Social Contract: Reframing the Debate

A recent “AGI social contract summit» warned that AGI could trigger rising inequality, concentrated power, and human disempowerment, and thus threaten the social contract. This framing is doubly unhelpful. First, tying risks to the slippery idea of “AGI” muddles the debate and lets industry defer today’s responsibilities to a speculative future. Second, it turns facts into fiction: advanced, contemporary AI is already straining the social contract. Read through the classical social contract tradition, these pressures are not novel, but familiar pathways to instability when wealth and power shift too quickly. Moreover, the reported key statements from the summit neglected other present risks, such as significant environmental impacts associated with current AI trajectories, that can and should be addressed using established social-contract principles.

Henrik Skaug Sætra is an Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, Department of Informatics. Sætra explores the intersection of political theory, ethics, and technology, with a particular emphasis on how AI impacts sustainability, democracy, and structures of power. His research spans a broad range of topics and technologies, and he leads the research group Technology and Sustainable Futures, focussing on how to anticipate and shape technological change and promote more sustainable futures.

After the lecture, we will head down to Aulakjelleren for a reception with light food and refreshments.