I’m actually sympathetic towards the view that mathematically solving alignment might be simply impossible. I.e. it might be unsolvable. Such is the opinion of Roman Yalmpolsky, an AI alignment researcher, who has written very good papers on its defense. However, I don’t think we lose much by having a couple hundred people working on it. We would only implement Friendly AI if we could mathematically prove it, so it’s not like we’d just go with a half-baked idea and create hell on Earth instead of “just” a paperclipper. And it’s not like Friendly AI is the only proposal in alignment either. People like Stuart Russell have a way more conservative approach, as in, “hey, maybe just don’t build advanced AI as utility maximizers since that will invariably produce chaos?”.
Some of this concepts might even be dangerous, or worse than doing nothing. Anyway, they are still in research and nothing is proven. To not try to do anything is just not acceptable, because I don’t think that the FIRST transformative/dangerous AI will be super virtuous. Maybe a very advanced AI would necessarily/logically be super virtuous. But we will build something dangerous before we get to that. Say, an AI that is only anything special in engineering, or even a specific type of engineering like nanotechnology. Such AI, which might even not be properly AGI, might already be extremely dangerous, for the obvious reason of having great power (from great intelligence in some key area(s)) without great values (orthogonality thesis).
“Furthermore, implementation of AI regulation is much easier than its removal. I suspect that once you ban good men from building AI, it’s over, we’re done, that’s it.”
Of course it wouldn’t be just any kind of regulation. Say, if you restrict access/production to supercomputers globally, you effectively slow AI development. Supercomputers are possible to control, laptops obviously aren’t.
Or, like I also said, a narrow AI nanny.
Are these and other similar measures dangerous? Certainly. But imo doing nothing is even way more.
I don’t even claim these are good ideas. We actually need more intelligent people to actually come up with actual good ideas in regulation. But I’m still pretty certain that regulation is the only way. Of course it can’t simply be “ok, so now governments are gonna ban AI research but they’re gonna keep doing it in their secret agencies anyway”. Narrow AI nanny is something that maybe could actually work, if far-fetched.
AI is advancing far quicker than our understanding of it, specially with black boxes like neural networks, and I find it impossible that things will stay on track when we build something that can actually have a vast real world impact.
If we could perhaps convince governments that AI is actually dangerous, and that humanity NECESSARILY has to drop all barriers and become way more cooperative if we want to have a shot of succeeding at not killing everyone or worse… Then it could be doable. Is this ridiculously hard? Yes, but still our only chance.
I’m actually sympathetic towards the view that mathematically solving alignment might be simply impossible. I.e. it might be unsolvable. Such is the opinion of Roman Yalmpolsky, an AI alignment researcher, who has written very good papers on its defense. However, I don’t think we lose much by having a couple hundred people working on it. We would only implement Friendly AI if we could mathematically prove it, so it’s not like we’d just go with a half-baked idea and create hell on Earth instead of “just” a paperclipper. And it’s not like Friendly AI is the only proposal in alignment either. People like Stuart Russell have a way more conservative approach, as in, “hey, maybe just don’t build advanced AI as utility maximizers since that will invariably produce chaos?”.
Some of this concepts might even be dangerous, or worse than doing nothing. Anyway, they are still in research and nothing is proven. To not try to do anything is just not acceptable, because I don’t think that the FIRST transformative/dangerous AI will be super virtuous. Maybe a very advanced AI would necessarily/logically be super virtuous. But we will build something dangerous before we get to that. Say, an AI that is only anything special in engineering, or even a specific type of engineering like nanotechnology. Such AI, which might even not be properly AGI, might already be extremely dangerous, for the obvious reason of having great power (from great intelligence in some key area(s)) without great values (orthogonality thesis).
“Furthermore, implementation of AI regulation is much easier than its removal. I suspect that once you ban good men from building AI, it’s over, we’re done, that’s it.”
Of course it wouldn’t be just any kind of regulation. Say, if you restrict access/production to supercomputers globally, you effectively slow AI development. Supercomputers are possible to control, laptops obviously aren’t.
Or, like I also said, a narrow AI nanny.
Are these and other similar measures dangerous? Certainly. But imo doing nothing is even way more.
I don’t even claim these are good ideas. We actually need more intelligent people to actually come up with actual good ideas in regulation. But I’m still pretty certain that regulation is the only way. Of course it can’t simply be “ok, so now governments are gonna ban AI research but they’re gonna keep doing it in their secret agencies anyway”. Narrow AI nanny is something that maybe could actually work, if far-fetched.
AI is advancing far quicker than our understanding of it, specially with black boxes like neural networks, and I find it impossible that things will stay on track when we build something that can actually have a vast real world impact.
If we could perhaps convince governments that AI is actually dangerous, and that humanity NECESSARILY has to drop all barriers and become way more cooperative if we want to have a shot of succeeding at not killing everyone or worse… Then it could be doable. Is this ridiculously hard? Yes, but still our only chance.