The Gammas and Deltas of “Brave New World” are moulded in the womb to be aligned.
“Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man.” Variously attributed to Aristotle and St. Ignatius of Loyola.
B. F. Skinner said something similar to (4), but I don’t have a quote to hand, to the effect that he could bring up any child to be anything. Edit: it was J. B. Watson: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”
It is notable, though, that the first three are fiction and the last two are speculation. (The fates of J.B. Watson’s children do not speak well of his boast.) No-one seems to have ever succeeded in doing this.
ETA: Back in the days of GOFAI one might imagine, as the OP does, making the thing to be already aligned. But we know no more of how the current generation of LLMs work that we do of the human brain. We grow them, then train them with RLHF to cut off the things we don’t like, like the Gammas and Deltas in artificial wombs. From the point of view of AI safety demonstrable before deployment, this is clearly a wrong method. That aside, is it moral?
Here are five conundrums about creating the thing with alignment built in.
The House Elf whose fulfilment lies in servitude is aligned.
The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten is aligned.
The Gammas and Deltas of “Brave New World” are moulded in the womb to be aligned.
“Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man.” Variously attributed to Aristotle and St. Ignatius of Loyola.
B. F. Skinner said something similar to (4), but I don’t have a quote to hand, to the effect that he could bring up any child to be anything.Edit: it was J. B. Watson: “Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.”It is notable, though, that the first three are fiction and the last two are speculation. (The fates of J.B. Watson’s children do not speak well of his boast.) No-one seems to have ever succeeded in doing this.
ETA: Back in the days of GOFAI one might imagine, as the OP does, making the thing to be already aligned. But we know no more of how the current generation of LLMs work that we do of the human brain. We grow them, then train them with RLHF to cut off the things we don’t like, like the Gammas and Deltas in artificial wombs. From the point of view of AI safety demonstrable before deployment, this is clearly a wrong method. That aside, is it moral?
@So8res I’d be really interested in how you thought about these, especially the house elf example.