He should be rather optimistic because otherwise he probably wouldn’t stay at DeepMind.
I also don’t remember he said much about the problems of misuse, AI proliferation, and Moloch, as well as the issue of choosing the particular ethics for the AGI, so I take this as small indirect evidence for that DeepMind have a plan similar to OpenAI’s “superalignment”, i.e., “we will create a cognitively aligned agent and will task it with solving the rest of societal and civilisational alignment and coordination issues”.
You could be right, but I didn’t hear any hints that he intends to kick those problems down the road to an aligned agent. That’s Conjecture’s CoEm plan, but I read OpenAIs Superalignment plan as even more vague: make AI better so it can help with alignment, prior to being AGI. Theirs was sort of a plan to create a plan. I like Shane’s better, in part because it’s closer to being an actual plan.
He did explicitly note that choosing the particular ethics for the AGI is an outstanding problem, but I don’t think he proposed solutions, either AI or human. I corrigibility as the central value gives as much time to solve the outer alignment problem as you want (a “long contemplation”), after the inner alignment problem is solved, but I have no idea if his thinking is similar.
I also don’t think he addressed misuse, proliferation, or competition. I can think of multiple reasons for keeping them offstage, but I suspect they just didn’t happen to make the top priority list for this relatively short interview.
He should be rather optimistic because otherwise he probably wouldn’t stay at DeepMind.
I also don’t remember he said much about the problems of misuse, AI proliferation, and Moloch, as well as the issue of choosing the particular ethics for the AGI, so I take this as small indirect evidence for that DeepMind have a plan similar to OpenAI’s “superalignment”, i.e., “we will create a cognitively aligned agent and will task it with solving the rest of societal and civilisational alignment and coordination issues”.
You could be right, but I didn’t hear any hints that he intends to kick those problems down the road to an aligned agent. That’s Conjecture’s CoEm plan, but I read OpenAIs Superalignment plan as even more vague: make AI better so it can help with alignment, prior to being AGI. Theirs was sort of a plan to create a plan. I like Shane’s better, in part because it’s closer to being an actual plan.
He did explicitly note that choosing the particular ethics for the AGI is an outstanding problem, but I don’t think he proposed solutions, either AI or human. I corrigibility as the central value gives as much time to solve the outer alignment problem as you want (a “long contemplation”), after the inner alignment problem is solved, but I have no idea if his thinking is similar.
I also don’t think he addressed misuse, proliferation, or competition. I can think of multiple reasons for keeping them offstage, but I suspect they just didn’t happen to make the top priority list for this relatively short interview.