I want to be clear: Lots of terrifyingly smart people made this mistake, including some of the smartest scientists who ever lived. Many of them made this mistake for a decade or more before wising up or giving up.
Imagine this. Imagine a future world where gradient-driven optimization never achieves aligned AI. But there is success of a different kind. At great cost, ASI arrives. Humanity ends. In his few remaining days, a scholar with the pen name of Rete reflects back on the 80s approach (i.e. using deterministic rules and explicit knowledge) with the words: “The technology wasn’t there yet; it didn’t work commercially. But they were onto something—at the very least, their approach was probably compatible with provably safe intelligence. Under other circumstances, perhaps it would have played a more influential role in promoting human thriving.”
Imagine this. Imagine a future world where gradient-driven optimization never achieves aligned AI. But there is success of a different kind. At great cost, ASI arrives. Humanity ends. In his few remaining days, a scholar with the pen name of Rete reflects back on the 80s approach (i.e. using deterministic rules and explicit knowledge) with the words: “The technology wasn’t there yet; it didn’t work commercially. But they were onto something—at the very least, their approach was probably compatible with provably safe intelligence. Under other circumstances, perhaps it would have played a more influential role in promoting human thriving.”