Hmm, I think I am pretty strongly in favor of mind-reading technology, but weakly held opinion.
The big upside to mind-reading technology, is that we could use it on prospective people in power. I.e. lock powerful positions behind tests that determine whether the candidate in question has good intentions, intends to do what they said they would do, doesn’t have ulterior motives people ought to know et cetera. This would solve one of the biggest problems in civillization.
The dictator thing, I don’t care that much about it, because I think I’m much more pessimistic than you are about how feasible it is for the populace to overthrow competent dictatorships empowered with modern technology. Like my model of revolutions against oppressive governments, is that the bottleneck (from the peoples perspective), is communication and coordination. And that is something modern governments can suppress effectively without using mind-reading technology.
I also think mind-reading tech would be much more beneficial for making AI go well than you seem to do. Like, in my mind, the primary benefit is not enabling humans staying in the loop for longer, or merging with AIs, or anything like that. It’s that many problems in alignment are bottlenecked by us not understanding human minds well enough, not being able to elicit human values/preferences well enough. Mind reading technology seems like it could plausibly help? And human intelligence amplification is something that seems like it would also be helped by mind-reading technology (independent of us merging with AIs, I’m thinking stuff like having good neurofeedback).
If it’s not very feasible for the populace to overthrow a dictatorship, why would you expect people in power to let themselves be mind-read? They would probably say that they have national security secrets, or corporate IP secrets, which can’t be allowed to spread. They would not trust that a public provided device would not steal their secrets, and if they used a device they tuned themselves, they could manufacture agreement without actually being properly mind-read.
Especially since the real source of alignment for positions of power will come from others currently in power. It’s very unlikely that the populace will be able to decide on what values are important for a politician or public servant, they will likely be codified by existing institutions, with an eye for obedience and loyalty.
Whereas the overall populace will have no real ability to stop the government from slowly enforcing mind-reading for civil service or military positions, or positions at high-level research labs.
As for AI, I could see it being useful, but it seems like it could also prompt more concentration of power and result in an AGI aligned to a small group of people.
I don’t expect to put the mind-reading headbands on dictators, I expect to put them on people in democracies. There, if people want to have the minds of the politicians read badly enough, they can do that. I mean, probably the politicians don’t want to have their mind read, but you could also imagine that politicians who genuinely do have good intentions and are honest, would want to support the policy, because it would help them. In either case, it doesn’t matter all that much.
They would probably say that they have national security secrets, or corporate IP secrets, which can’t be allowed to spread. They would not trust that a public provided device would not steal their secrets, and if they used a device they tuned themselves, they could manufacture agreement without actually being properly mind-read.
I mean, I can see many ways around this. This doesn’t strike me as a much harder problem than setting up a fair election, whose results the public trusts. Or maybe building trustworthy voting machines is a better example. Its not trivial, but also not actually that hard.
Like, you could imagine having the mind-reading device hardware specs be public, and the softward open-source.
And you could imagine putting the mind-reading devices semi-public places, like courtrooms. And you could imagine having them be open for inspection to the public before they’re used on important people, so you can be sure they do what they’re supposed to. Average people could try them on and see that they work, technically competent people could come and inspect them closely.
Or you could imagine each interest group building their own device, and then the prospective politicians making their vows one time for each device.
It’s very unlikely that the populace will be able to decide on what values are important for a politician or public servant, they will likely be codified by existing institutions, with an eye for obedience and loyalty.
Of course. But that is the case right now. The public has a bunch of stupid opinions about what values the politicians should have, and then we select a mix of politicians with actually those stupid values, and politicians lying.
What I have in mind is more like, politicians have to make an oath where they answer a long list of statements like:
I have not lied during my campaign about anything relating to my candidacy
My main motivation for (office) is not primarily self-interested
My main motivation for running for office is not to make money
My main motivation is not to be famous
My main motivation is not to enrich my friends
My main motivation is not to pardon my friends
I have the best interests of all citizens in mind
I will try to the best of my ability to do what I said I would do
I do not have important plans many people would be angry to learn about
I’ve honestly represented my political views in public appearances
… (100 more detailed statement like this)
Then using the mind-reader basically as a reliable lie-detector.
I think you missed the point, or at least what I took to be the point. Nobody who has ever read a classified document, or had a confidential conversation with a government official (of our government or a foreign one) would ever be able to put on a mind reading head band, for fear of leaking information they shouldn’t. People who have run for President in the last fifty years include a former Director of Central Intelligence, a former longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a former US Navy captain, a former US Navy officer who worked on nuclear submarines, several sitting or former Vice Presidents, and several sitting or former Presidents. None of these people would be able to put on a mind reading headband for fear of revealing classified information.
Even setting that concern aside, considering how little public scrutiny major candidates have submitted themselves to in recent elections, it seems incredibly implausible that they would submit themselves to even more public scrutiny in the form of mind reading.
We can already tell when powerful people simply do bad things, express bad intentions, or get caught in lies… it seems like there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick up there before we resort to mind reading, and I strongly suspect that the reasons for that will apply just as well to this use of mind-reading tech.
Big difference between telling when they lie, and telling when they get caught lying?
I think people who get caught lying to or expressing bad intentions towards, the base they rely on for support, before they run for office, typically are not elected. Curious if you have counterexamples. Especially clear counterexamples that aren’t easy to rationalize away (which direct lies under mind-reading people trust would definitely not be)
Maybe the most important point is, the way I see mind-reading helping, is not necessarily that there are a bunch of immediate problems with the people in power, and we’d replace those with better people, and this would make a huge difference (although I think it would make a big difference). Its more that we’ve had to build in a bunch of limitations, complexity, and intentional slowness/redundancy/inefficiency/weakness, into our current governance structure, to make it robust to liars and people with bad intentions, and to make it able to operate without all that much trust. And if those constraints were lifted, we could build much better governance entirely. Like, if a dirt-cheap and flexible method of teleportation was invented, the main benefit would not come from having planes fly into a portal after liftoff, cutting berkeley → paris by 11 hours. We would no longer need planes, or roads, or ships. And 10 years later we’d be halfway to a sci-fi utopia, having solved material scarcity, climate change, and having started terraforming the moon.
Hmm, I think I am pretty strongly in favor of mind-reading technology, but weakly held opinion.
The big upside to mind-reading technology, is that we could use it on prospective people in power. I.e. lock powerful positions behind tests that determine whether the candidate in question has good intentions, intends to do what they said they would do, doesn’t have ulterior motives people ought to know et cetera. This would solve one of the biggest problems in civillization.
The dictator thing, I don’t care that much about it, because I think I’m much more pessimistic than you are about how feasible it is for the populace to overthrow competent dictatorships empowered with modern technology. Like my model of revolutions against oppressive governments, is that the bottleneck (from the peoples perspective), is communication and coordination. And that is something modern governments can suppress effectively without using mind-reading technology.
I also think mind-reading tech would be much more beneficial for making AI go well than you seem to do. Like, in my mind, the primary benefit is not enabling humans staying in the loop for longer, or merging with AIs, or anything like that. It’s that many problems in alignment are bottlenecked by us not understanding human minds well enough, not being able to elicit human values/preferences well enough. Mind reading technology seems like it could plausibly help? And human intelligence amplification is something that seems like it would also be helped by mind-reading technology (independent of us merging with AIs, I’m thinking stuff like having good neurofeedback).
If it’s not very feasible for the populace to overthrow a dictatorship, why would you expect people in power to let themselves be mind-read? They would probably say that they have national security secrets, or corporate IP secrets, which can’t be allowed to spread. They would not trust that a public provided device would not steal their secrets, and if they used a device they tuned themselves, they could manufacture agreement without actually being properly mind-read.
Especially since the real source of alignment for positions of power will come from others currently in power. It’s very unlikely that the populace will be able to decide on what values are important for a politician or public servant, they will likely be codified by existing institutions, with an eye for obedience and loyalty.
Whereas the overall populace will have no real ability to stop the government from slowly enforcing mind-reading for civil service or military positions, or positions at high-level research labs.
As for AI, I could see it being useful, but it seems like it could also prompt more concentration of power and result in an AGI aligned to a small group of people.
I don’t expect to put the mind-reading headbands on dictators, I expect to put them on people in democracies. There, if people want to have the minds of the politicians read badly enough, they can do that. I mean, probably the politicians don’t want to have their mind read, but you could also imagine that politicians who genuinely do have good intentions and are honest, would want to support the policy, because it would help them. In either case, it doesn’t matter all that much.
I mean, I can see many ways around this. This doesn’t strike me as a much harder problem than setting up a fair election, whose results the public trusts. Or maybe building trustworthy voting machines is a better example. Its not trivial, but also not actually that hard.
Like, you could imagine having the mind-reading device hardware specs be public, and the softward open-source.
And you could imagine putting the mind-reading devices semi-public places, like courtrooms. And you could imagine having them be open for inspection to the public before they’re used on important people, so you can be sure they do what they’re supposed to. Average people could try them on and see that they work, technically competent people could come and inspect them closely.
Or you could imagine each interest group building their own device, and then the prospective politicians making their vows one time for each device.
Of course. But that is the case right now. The public has a bunch of stupid opinions about what values the politicians should have, and then we select a mix of politicians with actually those stupid values, and politicians lying.
What I have in mind is more like, politicians have to make an oath where they answer a long list of statements like:
I have not lied during my campaign about anything relating to my candidacy
My main motivation for (office) is not primarily self-interested
My main motivation for running for office is not to make money
My main motivation is not to be famous
My main motivation is not to enrich my friends
My main motivation is not to pardon my friends
I have the best interests of all citizens in mind
I will try to the best of my ability to do what I said I would do
I do not have important plans many people would be angry to learn about
I’ve honestly represented my political views in public appearances
… (100 more detailed statement like this)
Then using the mind-reader basically as a reliable lie-detector.
I think you missed the point, or at least what I took to be the point. Nobody who has ever read a classified document, or had a confidential conversation with a government official (of our government or a foreign one) would ever be able to put on a mind reading head band, for fear of leaking information they shouldn’t. People who have run for President in the last fifty years include a former Director of Central Intelligence, a former longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a former US Navy captain, a former US Navy officer who worked on nuclear submarines, several sitting or former Vice Presidents, and several sitting or former Presidents. None of these people would be able to put on a mind reading headband for fear of revealing classified information.
Even setting that concern aside, considering how little public scrutiny major candidates have submitted themselves to in recent elections, it seems incredibly implausible that they would submit themselves to even more public scrutiny in the form of mind reading.
We can already tell when powerful people simply do bad things, express bad intentions, or get caught in lies… it seems like there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick up there before we resort to mind reading, and I strongly suspect that the reasons for that will apply just as well to this use of mind-reading tech.
Big difference between telling when they lie, and telling when they get caught lying?
I think people who get caught lying to or expressing bad intentions towards, the base they rely on for support, before they run for office, typically are not elected. Curious if you have counterexamples. Especially clear counterexamples that aren’t easy to rationalize away (which direct lies under mind-reading people trust would definitely not be)
Maybe the most important point is, the way I see mind-reading helping, is not necessarily that there are a bunch of immediate problems with the people in power, and we’d replace those with better people, and this would make a huge difference (although I think it would make a big difference). Its more that we’ve had to build in a bunch of limitations, complexity, and intentional slowness/redundancy/inefficiency/weakness, into our current governance structure, to make it robust to liars and people with bad intentions, and to make it able to operate without all that much trust. And if those constraints were lifted, we could build much better governance entirely. Like, if a dirt-cheap and flexible method of teleportation was invented, the main benefit would not come from having planes fly into a portal after liftoff, cutting berkeley → paris by 11 hours. We would no longer need planes, or roads, or ships. And 10 years later we’d be halfway to a sci-fi utopia, having solved material scarcity, climate change, and having started terraforming the moon.