That would matter if you didn’t need language+morality to interpret language in this case. To interpret instructions correctly, you have to understand what they mean, and that requires a full understanding of the motivations underlying the request.
You don’t just need language, you need language+thought, which is even more complex than language+morality.
I am using “having language” to mean “having language plus thought”, ie to have linguistic understanding, ie to have the ability to pass a Turning Test. Language without thought is just parotting.
To follow instructions relating morality correctly, an entity must be able to understand them correctly at the semantic levlel. An entity need not agree with them, or hold to them itself, as we can see from the ability of people to play along with social rules they don’t personally agree with.
No, that’s not right. language + thought is to understand language and be able to fully model the mindstate of the person who was speaking to you. If you don’t have this, and just have language, ‘get grandma out of the burning house ’ gets you the lethal ejector seat method. If you want do-what-I-mean rather than do-what-I-say, you need full thought modeling. Which is obviously harder than language + morality, which requires only being able to parse language correctly and understand a certain category of thought.
Or to phrase it a different way: language on its own gets you nothing productive, just a system that can correctly parse statements. To understand what they mean, rather than what they say, you need something much broader, and language+morality is smaller than that broad thing.
Fully understanding the semantics of morality may be simpler than fully understanding the semantics of everything, but it doesn’t get you AI safety, because an AI can understand something without being motivated to act on it.
When I wrote “language”, I meant words + understanding ….understanding in general, therefore including understanding of ethics..and when I wrote “morality” I meant a kind motivation.
That would matter if you didn’t need language+morality to interpret language in this case. To interpret instructions correctly, you have to understand what they mean, and that requires a full understanding of the motivations underlying the request.
You don’t just need language, you need language+thought, which is even more complex than language+morality.
I am using “having language” to mean “having language plus thought”, ie to have linguistic understanding, ie to have the ability to pass a Turning Test. Language without thought is just parotting.
To follow instructions relating morality correctly, an entity must be able to understand them correctly at the semantic levlel. An entity need not agree with them, or hold to them itself, as we can see from the ability of people to play along with social rules they don’t personally agree with.
No, that’s not right. language + thought is to understand language and be able to fully model the mindstate of the person who was speaking to you. If you don’t have this, and just have language, ‘get grandma out of the burning house ’ gets you the lethal ejector seat method. If you want do-what-I-mean rather than do-what-I-say, you need full thought modeling. Which is obviously harder than language + morality, which requires only being able to parse language correctly and understand a certain category of thought.
Or to phrase it a different way: language on its own gets you nothing productive, just a system that can correctly parse statements. To understand what they mean, rather than what they say, you need something much broader, and language+morality is smaller than that broad thing.
Fully understanding the semantics of morality may be simpler than fully understanding the semantics of everything, but it doesn’t get you AI safety, because an AI can understand something without being motivated to act on it.
When I wrote “language”, I meant words + understanding ….understanding in general, therefore including understanding of ethics..and when I wrote “morality” I meant a kind motivation.
(Alice in Wonderland)