Mathematics Department Colloquium 
The Ohio State University

  Year 2025-2026

Time: (Fall 2025) Thursdays 3:00-3:55 pm
Location: Scott Lab E001

YouTube channel

Schedule of talks:


 

TIME  SPEAKER TITLE
September 25  
Lionel Levine  
(Cornell University)		 Measuring AI Values
October 23  
Vadim Gorin  
(UC Berkeley)
October 30  
Tye Lidman  
(North Carolina State University)
November 6  
Greta Panova  
(USC)
November 20  
Xin Zhou  
(Cornell University)
December 4  
Jeremy Avigad  
(Carnegie Mellon)
February 26  
Jon Rosenberg  
(University of Maryland)
March 12  
John Etnyre  
(Georgia Tech)
April 9  
Juan Rivera-Letelier  
(University of Rochester)
April 23  
David Barrett  
(University of Michigan)


Abstracts

(L. Levine): Aligning AI with human values is a pressing unsolved problem. How can mathematicians contribute to solving it? We can start by clarifying the terms: What are values? What does it mean to "align" an AI to a given set of values? And how would one verify that a given AI is aligned? These hard questions, plus the annoying little issue of whose values to prioritize, led researchers at leading AI labs to aim instead for "intent alignment": AI that (wants to) do what its developers intend. Can intent alignment deliver a good future, where humans thrive alongside AI that's much smarter than us? I'll argue that intent alignment might be extremely hard to achieve, and that it's neither necessary nor sufficient for a good future. Our best shot at a good future is to not build superhuman AI. Not building superhuman AI is a coordination problem: it would require international treaties, monitoring, regulation. Coordination problems are hard (but not as hard as any form of AI alignment!). Coordination failures happen, so it would be wise to have a backup plan. Returning to value alignment as a possible path forward, I'll describe the math behind EigenBench, a pagerank-inspired approach to the problem of measuring AI values.

(T. Lidman)

(V. Gorin):

(G. Panova):

(X. Zhou):

(J. Avigad):

(J. Rosenberg):

(J. Etnyre):

(J. Rivera-Letelier):

(D. Barrett):

Past Ohio State University Mathematics Department Colloquia


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