Okay. I do agree that one way to frame Matthew’s main point is that MIRI thought it would be hard to specify the human value function, and an LM that understands human values and reliably tells us the truth about that understanding is such a specification, and hence falsifies that belief.
To your second question: MIRI thought we couldn’t specify the value function to do the bounded task of filling the cauldron, because any value function we could naively think of writing, when given to an AGI (which was assumed to be a utility argmaxer), leads to all sorts of instrumentally convergent behavior such as taking over the world to make damn sure the cauldron is really filled, since we forgot all the hidden complexity of our wish.
Okay. I do agree that one way to frame Matthew’s main point is that MIRI thought it would be hard to specify the human value function, and an LM that understands human values and reliably tells us the truth about that understanding is such a specification, and hence falsifies that belief.
To your second question: MIRI thought we couldn’t specify the value function to do the bounded task of filling the cauldron, because any value function we could naively think of writing, when given to an AGI (which was assumed to be a utility argmaxer), leads to all sorts of instrumentally convergent behavior such as taking over the world to make damn sure the cauldron is really filled, since we forgot all the hidden complexity of our wish.