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).
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).