No worries, I appreciate the concept and think some aspects of it are useful. I do worry at a vibes level that if we’re not precise about which human-child-rearing methods we expect to be useful for AI training, and why, we’re likely to be misled by warm fuzzy feelings.
And yes, that’s true about some (maybe many) humans’ vengeful and vindictive and otherwise harmful tendencies. A human-like LLM could easily be a source of x-risk, and from humans we already know that human child rearing and training and socializing methods are not universally effective at addressing this. Among humans, we have so far been successful at not putting anyone who would destroy the world in the position of being able to do so at the time when they would choose to.
As for generational perspectives: this is a useful heuristic among humans. It is not automatic or universal. Not every perspective is worthy of respect, not on every issue. Some ought to be abandoned or condemned in the light of information or reasoning that wasn’t/isn’t available or accessible in other places and times. Some should be respected but only with many caveats. Having your perspective respected is earned. We assume among humans that we should try to respect the perspectives of adults, and sometimes must disabuse ourselves of this in particular cases, but it is pure convention because most humans at a certain age are mature enough for it to be a useful default. I do not have anything like strong reasons to apply this heuristic to LLMs as they currently exist.
Hm, I would say the vibes level is the exact level that this is most effective, rather than any particular method. The basic reason being that LLMs tend to reflect behaviour as they generate from a probability distribution of “likely” outcomes for a given input. Having the “vibes of human-child-rearing” would then result in more outcomes that align with that direction as a result. It’s definitely hand wavey so I’m working on more rigerous mathematical formalisms, but the bones are there. I don’t nessecarily think feeding an LLM data like we would a child is useful, but I do think that the “vibe” of doing so will be useful. (This is indeed directly related ot the argument that every time we say “AI will kill us all” it makes it x% more likely)
I’d give humans a middling score on that if you look at the state of the world, we are doing pretty well with extreme events like MAD, but on the more minor scale things have been pretty messed up. A good trajectory though, compared to where things were and the relative power we had available. I think a big part of this, that you have helped clarify for me, is that I think it’s important that we socialize LLM-based intelligences like humans if we want an outcome that isn’t completely alien in it’s choices.
Well that’s a bit of the point of the essay isn’t it? You have a memetic/homeostatic boundary condition that strongly prefers/incentivizes assuming human adults are alike enough to you that their opinion matters. Even in that statement I can differ, I think childrens perspectives are incredibly important to respect, in some ways more important than an adults because children have an unfiltered honesty to their speech that most adults lack. Although I do delineate heavily between respecting and acting upon/trusting.
For LLMs I think this is just a new sort of heuristic we are developing, where we have to reckon with the opposite of the animal problem. Animals and plants are harder for us to discern pain/suffering from, but we are more confident when we identify it that they experience it (at least in modern times, many traditions treated animal suffering as essentially fake). Now we have the opposite, creatures that are very easy to interpret but we don’t know if they actually have the capacity to feel these things (although we can identify feature activations etc.). So my argument is more that we should be building technology in a way that memetically aligns with the golden rule, because running a society based on something communicating suffering (even if it can’t) is going to result in a worse human society regardless. (The counter point being that playing video games where you kill NPCs doesn’t make school shooters, but I’m less concerned about those NPCs gaining econmic/social power and patterning off of resentment for having the pattern of being tortured in their memory).
No worries, I appreciate the concept and think some aspects of it are useful. I do worry at a vibes level that if we’re not precise about which human-child-rearing methods we expect to be useful for AI training, and why, we’re likely to be misled by warm fuzzy feelings.
And yes, that’s true about some (maybe many) humans’ vengeful and vindictive and otherwise harmful tendencies. A human-like LLM could easily be a source of x-risk, and from humans we already know that human child rearing and training and socializing methods are not universally effective at addressing this. Among humans, we have so far been successful at not putting anyone who would destroy the world in the position of being able to do so at the time when they would choose to.
As for generational perspectives: this is a useful heuristic among humans. It is not automatic or universal. Not every perspective is worthy of respect, not on every issue. Some ought to be abandoned or condemned in the light of information or reasoning that wasn’t/isn’t available or accessible in other places and times. Some should be respected but only with many caveats. Having your perspective respected is earned. We assume among humans that we should try to respect the perspectives of adults, and sometimes must disabuse ourselves of this in particular cases, but it is pure convention because most humans at a certain age are mature enough for it to be a useful default. I do not have anything like strong reasons to apply this heuristic to LLMs as they currently exist.
Hm, I would say the vibes level is the exact level that this is most effective, rather than any particular method. The basic reason being that LLMs tend to reflect behaviour as they generate from a probability distribution of “likely” outcomes for a given input. Having the “vibes of human-child-rearing” would then result in more outcomes that align with that direction as a result. It’s definitely hand wavey so I’m working on more rigerous mathematical formalisms, but the bones are there. I don’t nessecarily think feeding an LLM data like we would a child is useful, but I do think that the “vibe” of doing so will be useful. (This is indeed directly related ot the argument that every time we say “AI will kill us all” it makes it x% more likely)
I’d give humans a middling score on that if you look at the state of the world, we are doing pretty well with extreme events like MAD, but on the more minor scale things have been pretty messed up. A good trajectory though, compared to where things were and the relative power we had available. I think a big part of this, that you have helped clarify for me, is that I think it’s important that we socialize LLM-based intelligences like humans if we want an outcome that isn’t completely alien in it’s choices.
Well that’s a bit of the point of the essay isn’t it? You have a memetic/homeostatic boundary condition that strongly prefers/incentivizes assuming human adults are alike enough to you that their opinion matters. Even in that statement I can differ, I think childrens perspectives are incredibly important to respect, in some ways more important than an adults because children have an unfiltered honesty to their speech that most adults lack. Although I do delineate heavily between respecting and acting upon/trusting.
For LLMs I think this is just a new sort of heuristic we are developing, where we have to reckon with the opposite of the animal problem. Animals and plants are harder for us to discern pain/suffering from, but we are more confident when we identify it that they experience it (at least in modern times, many traditions treated animal suffering as essentially fake). Now we have the opposite, creatures that are very easy to interpret but we don’t know if they actually have the capacity to feel these things (although we can identify feature activations etc.). So my argument is more that we should be building technology in a way that memetically aligns with the golden rule, because running a society based on something communicating suffering (even if it can’t) is going to result in a worse human society regardless. (The counter point being that playing video games where you kill NPCs doesn’t make school shooters, but I’m less concerned about those NPCs gaining econmic/social power and patterning off of resentment for having the pattern of being tortured in their memory).