The candy example involves good long-term planning right? But not explicit guesses of expected utility.
(No I wouldn’t say the candy example involves long-term planning—it’s fairly easy and doesn’t take that many steps. It’s true that long-term results can be accomplished without expected utility guesses from the world model, but I think it may be harder for really really hard problems because the value function isn’t that coherent.)
Imagine a dath ilani keeper who trained himself good heuristics for estimating expected utilities for what action to take or thought to think next, and reasons like that all the time. This keeper does not seem to me well-described as “using his model-based RL capabilities in the way we normally would expect”.
Why not? If he’s using such-and-such heuristic, then presumably that heuristic is motivating to them—assigned a positive value by the value function. And the reason it’s assigned a positive value by the value function is because of the past history of primary rewards etc.
Say during keeper training the keeper was rewarded for thinking in productive ways, so the value function may have learned to supply valence for thinking in productive ways.
The way I currently think of it, it doesn’t matter which goal the keeper then attacks, because the value function still assigns high valence for thinking in those fun productive ways. So most goals/values could be optimized that way.
Of course, the goals the keeper will end up optimizing are likely close to some self-reflective thoughts that have high valence. It could be an unlikely failure mode, but it’s possible that the thing that gets optimized ends up different from what was high valence. If that happens, strategic thinking can be used to figure out how keep valence flowing / how to motivate your brain to continue working on something.
The world-model does the “is” stuff, which in this case includes the fact that planA causes a higher expected reduction in pdoom than planB. The value function (and reward function) does the “ought” stuff, which in this case includes the notion that low pdoom is good and high pdoom is bad, as opposed to the other way around.
Ok actually the way I imagined it, the value function doesn’t evaluate based on abstract concepts like pdoom, but rather the whole reasoning is related to thoughts like “i am thinking like the person I want to be” which have high valence.
(Though I guess your pdoom evaluation is similar to the “take the expected utility guess from the world model” value function that I orignially had in mind. I guess the way I modeled it was maybe more like that there’s a belief like “pdoom=high ⇔ bad” and then the value function is just like “apparently that option is bad, so let’s not do that”, rather than the value function itself assinging low value to high pdoom. (Where the value function previously would’ve needed to learn to trust the good/bad judgement of the world model, though again I think it’s unlikely that it works that way in humans.))
How do you imagine the value function might learn to assign negative valence to “pdoom=high”?
Say during keeper training the keeper was rewarded for thinking in productive ways, so the value function may have learned to supply valence for thinking in productive ways.
The way I currently think of it, it doesn’t matter which goal the keeper then attacks, because the value function still assigns high valence for thinking in those fun productive ways.
You seem to be in a train-then-deploy mindset, rather than a continuous-learning mindset, I think. In my view, the value function never stops being edited to hew closely to primary rewards. The minute the value function claims that a primary reward is coming, and then no primary reward actually arrives, the value function will be edited to not make that prediction again.
For example, imagine a person who has always liked listening to jazz, but right now she’s clinically depressed, so she turns on some jazz, but finds that it doesn’t feel rewarding or enjoyable. Not only will she turn the music right back off, but she has also learned that it’s pointless to even turn it on, at least when she’s in this mood. That would be a value function update.
Now, it’s possible that the Keeper 101 course was taught by a teacher who the trainee looked up to. Then the teacher said “X is good”, where X could be a metacognitive strategy, a goal, a virtue, or whatever. The trainee may well continue believing that X is good after graduation. But that’s just because there’s a primary reward related to social instincts, and imagining yourself as being impressive to people you admire. I agree that this kind of primary reward can support lots of different object-level motivations—cultural norms are somewhat arbitrary.
How do you imagine the value function might learn to assign negative valence to “pdoom=high”?
Could be the social copying thing I mentioned above, or else the person is thinking of one of the connotations and implications of pdoom that hooks into some other primary reward, like maybe they imagine the robot apocalypse will be physically painful, and pain is bad (primary reward), or doom will mean no more friendship and satisfying-curiosity, but friendship and satisfying-curiosity are good (primary reward), etc. Or more than one of the above, and/or different for different people.
Thanks! I think you’re right that my “value function still assigns high valence for thinking in those fun productive ways” hypothesis isn’t realistic for the reason you described.
Then the teacher said “X is good”, where X could be a metacognitive strategy, a goal, a virtue, or whatever. The trainee may well continue believing that X is good after graduation. But that’s just because there’s a primary reward related to social instincts, and imagining yourself as being impressive to people you admire.
I somehow previously hadn’t properly internalized that you think primary reward fires even if you only imagine another person admiring you. It seems quite plausible but not sure yet.
Paraphrase of your model of how you might end up pursuing what a fictional character would pursue. (Please correct if wrong.):
The fictional character does cool stuff so you start to admire him.
You imagine yourself doing something similarly cool and have the associated thought “the fictional character would be impressed by me”, which triggers primary reward.
The value function learns to assign positive valence to outcomes which the fictional character would be impressed by, since you sometimes imagine the fictional character being impressed afterwards and thus get primary reward.
I still find myself a bit confused:
Getting primary reward only for thinking of something rather than the actual outcome seems weird to me. I guess thoughts are also constrained by world-model-consistency, so you’re incentivized to imagine realistic scenarios that would impress someone, but still.
In particular I don’t quite see the advantage of that design compared to the design where primary reward only triggers on actually impressing people, and then the value function learns to predict that if you impress someone you will get positive reward, and thus predict high value for that and causal upstream events.
(That said it currently seems to me like forming values from imagining fictional characters is a thing, and that seems to be better-than-default predicted by the “primary reward even on just thoughts” hypothesis, though possible that there’s another hypothesis that explains that well too.)
(Tbc, I think fictional characters influencing one’s values is usually relatively weak/rare, though it’s my main hypothesis for how e.g. most of Eliezer’s values were formed (from his science fiction books). But I wouldn’t be shocked if forming values from fictional characters actually isn’t a thing.)
I’m not quite sure whether one would actually think the thought “the fictional character would be impressed by me”. It rather seems like one might think something like “what would the fictional character do”, without imagining the fictional character thinking about oneself.
(No I wouldn’t say the candy example involves long-term planning—it’s fairly easy and doesn’t take that many steps. It’s true that long-term results can be accomplished without expected utility guesses from the world model, but I think it may be harder for really really hard problems because the value function isn’t that coherent.)
Say during keeper training the keeper was rewarded for thinking in productive ways, so the value function may have learned to supply valence for thinking in productive ways.
The way I currently think of it, it doesn’t matter which goal the keeper then attacks, because the value function still assigns high valence for thinking in those fun productive ways. So most goals/values could be optimized that way.
Of course, the goals the keeper will end up optimizing are likely close to some self-reflective thoughts that have high valence. It could be an unlikely failure mode, but it’s possible that the thing that gets optimized ends up different from what was high valence. If that happens, strategic thinking can be used to figure out how keep valence flowing / how to motivate your brain to continue working on something.
Ok actually the way I imagined it, the value function doesn’t evaluate based on abstract concepts like pdoom, but rather the whole reasoning is related to thoughts like “i am thinking like the person I want to be” which have high valence.
(Though I guess your pdoom evaluation is similar to the “take the expected utility guess from the world model” value function that I orignially had in mind. I guess the way I modeled it was maybe more like that there’s a belief like “pdoom=high ⇔ bad” and then the value function is just like “apparently that option is bad, so let’s not do that”, rather than the value function itself assinging low value to high pdoom. (Where the value function previously would’ve needed to learn to trust the good/bad judgement of the world model, though again I think it’s unlikely that it works that way in humans.))
How do you imagine the value function might learn to assign negative valence to “pdoom=high”?
You seem to be in a train-then-deploy mindset, rather than a continuous-learning mindset, I think. In my view, the value function never stops being edited to hew closely to primary rewards. The minute the value function claims that a primary reward is coming, and then no primary reward actually arrives, the value function will be edited to not make that prediction again.
For example, imagine a person who has always liked listening to jazz, but right now she’s clinically depressed, so she turns on some jazz, but finds that it doesn’t feel rewarding or enjoyable. Not only will she turn the music right back off, but she has also learned that it’s pointless to even turn it on, at least when she’s in this mood. That would be a value function update.
Now, it’s possible that the Keeper 101 course was taught by a teacher who the trainee looked up to. Then the teacher said “X is good”, where X could be a metacognitive strategy, a goal, a virtue, or whatever. The trainee may well continue believing that X is good after graduation. But that’s just because there’s a primary reward related to social instincts, and imagining yourself as being impressive to people you admire. I agree that this kind of primary reward can support lots of different object-level motivations—cultural norms are somewhat arbitrary.
Could be the social copying thing I mentioned above, or else the person is thinking of one of the connotations and implications of pdoom that hooks into some other primary reward, like maybe they imagine the robot apocalypse will be physically painful, and pain is bad (primary reward), or doom will mean no more friendship and satisfying-curiosity, but friendship and satisfying-curiosity are good (primary reward), etc. Or more than one of the above, and/or different for different people.
Thanks! I think you’re right that my “value function still assigns high valence for thinking in those fun productive ways” hypothesis isn’t realistic for the reason you described.
I somehow previously hadn’t properly internalized that you think primary reward fires even if you only imagine another person admiring you. It seems quite plausible but not sure yet.
Paraphrase of your model of how you might end up pursuing what a fictional character would pursue. (Please correct if wrong.):
The fictional character does cool stuff so you start to admire him.
You imagine yourself doing something similarly cool and have the associated thought “the fictional character would be impressed by me”, which triggers primary reward.
The value function learns to assign positive valence to outcomes which the fictional character would be impressed by, since you sometimes imagine the fictional character being impressed afterwards and thus get primary reward.
I still find myself a bit confused:
Getting primary reward only for thinking of something rather than the actual outcome seems weird to me. I guess thoughts are also constrained by world-model-consistency, so you’re incentivized to imagine realistic scenarios that would impress someone, but still.
In particular I don’t quite see the advantage of that design compared to the design where primary reward only triggers on actually impressing people, and then the value function learns to predict that if you impress someone you will get positive reward, and thus predict high value for that and causal upstream events.
(That said it currently seems to me like forming values from imagining fictional characters is a thing, and that seems to be better-than-default predicted by the “primary reward even on just thoughts” hypothesis, though possible that there’s another hypothesis that explains that well too.)
(Tbc, I think fictional characters influencing one’s values is usually relatively weak/rare, though it’s my main hypothesis for how e.g. most of Eliezer’s values were formed (from his science fiction books). But I wouldn’t be shocked if forming values from fictional characters actually isn’t a thing.)
I’m not quite sure whether one would actually think the thought “the fictional character would be impressed by me”. It rather seems like one might think something like “what would the fictional character do”, without imagining the fictional character thinking about oneself.