To summarize our discussion:
There may be a way to get the right government action and greatly improve our chances of alignment. But it requires a number of actions, some of which may have never been done by our society before. They may be impossible.
These actions include: 1: learning how to effectively change people’s minds by videos (maybe something bordering on dark epistemology); 2: convincing tens of percent of the population of the right memes about alignment by social media (primarily youtube); 3: changing the minds of interlocutors in political debates (telling epistemological principles in the introduction to the debate??); 4: Using on broad public support to lobby for adequate laws helps alignment.
So, we need to allocate a few people to think through this option to see if we can accomplish each step. If we can, then we should communicate this plan to as many rationalists as possible so that as many talented video makers as possible can try to implement this plan.
Crazy philosopher
I agree that there are pitfalls, and it will take several attempts for the laws to start working.
If the US government allocates a significant amount of money for (good) AI alignment research in combination with the ban, then our chances will increase from 0% to 25% in a scenario without black swans.
The problem is that we don’t know what regulations we need to actually achieve the goal.
Will it work to ban all research to increase AI capabilities except those that bring us closer to alignment? Also ban the creation of AI systems with a capacity greater than X, with a gradual decrease in X.
There are many ways to increase the number of AI alignment researchers that then lead to those focusing on questions like algorithmic gender and race bias without actually making progress on the key problem.
The idea is to create videos fully describing the goals of AGI alignment, so viewers would understand the context.
I don’t understand the specific mechanism that makes us need rest days. I don’t see gears.
So even if politicians make regulation we need and increase number of AI alignment researchers it doesn’t increase our chances a lot?
Why?
If videos convince random people, then they will convince a certain number of politicians and AI developers.
If enough people are convinced of the need for AGI alignment, politicians will start promoting AGI alignment in order to get votes.
If we do videos well, the regulations of AI development will be introduced. If we do videos really well, the government can directly allocate money for research on alignment.
Spreading this idea will increase the number of our resources (more peoples will work on it).
It doesn’t work that way for me.
For example, when I repeat litany of Tarski, I think “I really really really want to know the truth about this whatever it is, and, I hope, biases will not stop me”. When I try get to know a person, I 1. create a question (feeling active curiosity about person in general); 2. ask it (feeling active curiosity about this question); 3. Go back to the 1-st point;
Even if I haven’t a concrete question, I often have a lot of desire to improve my map. It’s so for me, because one time I read “truth let us achieve our objective and make more powerful”, and I thought “I love achieve my objective and became more powerful! So… I really love truth now!”.
So when I try to understand my psychology or something else that is really important, something on periphery of mind say me: “You are on the good way! You’re getting closer to Omega! Continue whatever it takes!”
Thanks I would note it
If someone is working on this, they are probably not going to reply here. But, ignoring the difficulty of the task, it is not sure whether doing so would actually improve our chances. On one hand, yeah, humanity could get a few extra years to figure out alignment. On the other hand, I am afraid that the debate around alignment would be utterly poisoned; for most people, the word “alignment” would start to mean “a dangerous terrorist”. So during those extra years there probably wouldn’t be a lot of alignment research done.
OK, it was too radical. But what’s about “coordinate action of 200 peoples, that obtain a Taiwan visa, start to work as guardians on all chips fabrics and research laboratories. And, if all other’s our plans fall and humanity are about to extinct, this 200 peoples synthesize a lot of nitroglycerin in a garage...”That’s I mean by organisation we need. If MIRI did it, I wouldn’t know, but my intuition say MIRI did not do it.
My factual disagreement:
I suppose people are already doing this?
So do it more instead of writing articles “How Spend Last 5 Years Of LIfe”.
That was kinda the original plan of Less Wrong, which in hindsight probably seems too optimistic. (Even Putin expected three days to take over Ukraine.)
Continuing this plan is better than nothing (than accept defeat). And… good joke.
Something like MIRI?
MIRI is working on the direct alignment only, isn’t?
Different tasks require different levels of talent. Compared to saving the world, creating a successful startup is trivial
Taboo “saving the world”. I don’t want someone to “save the world”, I just want someone to “create the best youtube channel ever in using a boring theme”… ok, maybe that’s impossible. But maybe that’s possible, who knows.
I mostly agree with you.
Thanks for information about rational youtube channels and other. I have update myself.
In fact, even if someone already do this, I wrote this article to say “it is too early to capitulate”. Even if we have small chances to surviving, we should to do something, not write articles like MIRI announces new “Death With Dignity” strategy and accept the defeat. Because if you accept defeat, you would do nothing after and you won’t increase our chances to surviving (and you would if you don’t accept).
Basically, the answer to “why aren’t people trying harder?” is that many are already trying harder, for years, some of them for decades, and… well, the predictions are not very optimistic.
I see, it’s a interesting point of view I didn’t think about. But it’s a bias. Even if fight have little sense, considering importance of space colonisation, everything else have even less sens. How can you think about “death with dignity”, if your actions can increase probability of human Milky Way on 0.001%?
We still have many ways to fight for AGI aligning: it’s too early to capitulate.
That’s why I was so impressed to see cousin_it propose what I think is an even better solution on the Less Wrong thread on the matter:
Or you can write a cheque to your opponent for half of the winning amount in exchange for the fact that he will cooperate, and you will defect. It won’t make sense for him to defect.
I understand. My question is, can I publish an article about this so that only MIRI guys can read it, or send in Eliezer e-mail, or something.
I realized something important about psychology that is not yet publicly available, or that is very little known compared to its importance (60%). I don’t want to publish this as a regular post, because it may greatly help in the development of GAI (40% that it helps and 15% that it’s greatly helps), and I would like to help only those who are trying to create an alligned GAI. What should I do?
For a joke to be funny, you need a “wow effect” where the reader quickly connect together few evidences. But- go on! I’m sure you can do it!
This is a good philosophical exercise- can you define “humor” to make a good joke
The probability of the existence of the whole universe is much less than the existence of a single brain, so most likely we are an Eliezer dream.
Guessing the Teacher’s Password: Eliezer?
To modulate the actions of the evil genius in the book, Eliezer imagines that he is evil.
ok thanks
I realized something important about psychology that is not yet publicly available, or that is very little known compared to its importance (60%). I don’t want to publish this as a regular post, because it may greatly help in the development of GAI (40% that it helps and 15% that it’s greatly helps), and I would like to help only those who are trying to create an alligned GAI. What should I do?
Our discussion look like:
Me: we can do X, that mean do X1, X2 and X3.
You: we can fall on X2 by way Y.
Do you mean “we should to think about Y before realize plan X” or “plan X definitely fall because of Y”?
A question to better understand your opinion: if all alignment community would try to realize Political Plan with all efforts they do now to align an AI directly, what do you think is the probability of success of alignment?