Good post! It’s not fully clear to me what the difference between “worst-case model organism” and “constructed model organism” is—it seems like both involve “directly optimiz[ing] for the property [we] want to study”.
My take on the difference is that the “worst-case” ones are created for the purposes of studying safety techniques (control protocols, alignment training, auditing techniques), whereas the aspiration for the “constructed” ones is to learn about some potential propensity of models.
One difference is: Worst-case MOs are supposed to upper-bound the difficulty of some problem, like eliciting hidden goals, they need not exhibit super realistic behaviours or mechanisms. Constructed MOs are supposed to behave similarly to the real-life case so you can learn about the real situation, but they need not be a difficult case for safety measures.
Good post! It’s not fully clear to me what the difference between “worst-case model organism” and “constructed model organism” is—it seems like both involve “directly optimiz[ing] for the property [we] want to study”.
My take on the difference is that the “worst-case” ones are created for the purposes of studying safety techniques (control protocols, alignment training, auditing techniques), whereas the aspiration for the “constructed” ones is to learn about some potential propensity of models.
One difference is: Worst-case MOs are supposed to upper-bound the difficulty of some problem, like eliciting hidden goals, they need not exhibit super realistic behaviours or mechanisms. Constructed MOs are supposed to behave similarly to the real-life case so you can learn about the real situation, but they need not be a difficult case for safety measures.