One somewhat plausible argument I’ve heard is that GPTs are merely feedforward networks and that agency is relatively unlikely to arise in such networks. And of course there’s also the argument that agency is most natural/incentivised when you are navigating some environment over an extended period of time, which GPT-N isn’t. There are lots of arguments like this we can make. But currently it’s all pretty speculative; the relationship between base and mesa objective is poorly understood; for all we know even GPT-N could be a dangerous agent. (Also, people mean different things by “agent” and most people don’t have a clear concept of agency anyway.)
Yep! I recommend Gwern’s classic post on why tool AIs want to be agent AIs.
One somewhat plausible argument I’ve heard is that GPTs are merely feedforward networks and that agency is relatively unlikely to arise in such networks. And of course there’s also the argument that agency is most natural/incentivised when you are navigating some environment over an extended period of time, which GPT-N isn’t. There are lots of arguments like this we can make. But currently it’s all pretty speculative; the relationship between base and mesa objective is poorly understood; for all we know even GPT-N could be a dangerous agent. (Also, people mean different things by “agent” and most people don’t have a clear concept of agency anyway.)