Since everyone is busy, including myself, to point out all the ways this will go wrong, lets try to make it go right. I’m assuming you know a bit about the topic, if not check out Nick Bostrom 's work. Personally I think alignment can’t really be fixed, if it can be fixed we’ll need an a.s.i. to come up with the solution, which is the problem. So why start this topic? Cause even if it cant be fixed, we might steer away from a lot of suffering in the short term, which is always good. As I get older I’m starting to appreciate the Three Laws of Robotics more and more, this might be a good starting point to make sure it always follows these rules. Most people are scared for the terminator scenario, which is a valid concern, just look at what Anthropic did with the Pentagon contract, unfortunately Sam was all to eager to fill in those gaps. This scenario has one giant advantage, the problem will be staring you in the face. I’m not going to quote a certain drugged up Tony just because I dont like the movie, but it would be fitting. My point is this, we at least know who we need to make humanities last stand against. The problem with a combination of not solving alignment and a.s.i. is something much, much worse. I used to reference to the paper clip maximizing problem but because of lacking creativity they turned that into the terminator problem, which does a disservice to the point it was intended to. Each time when it turns to the terminator, which again, could also happen, there is this us VS it intend. If I remember correctly that wasn’t Nick’s point about alignment risk. Let me explain and I’m curious what you guys come up with for solving alignment. Even without it starting or turning into the terminator scenario it could still end humanity. Simply because it just doesn’t care about human life. That’s a much bigger problem then the create something to kill humans issues. Why? Because simple fix this, create that, built this prompts combined with an a.s.i. that doesn’t care for us, could turn the entire world into a machine optimized for that one task where human life simply just cant exist. Notice the difference, there was no terminator moment. If you’re planning on building a house somewhere on land you own, and you start digging to lay the foundation everyone will think this is a noble righteous endeavor, right? Nobody will find this evil, nobody thinks some injustice is done. But the ants that lived there in that spot, the rabbits, the mole, the worms, the caterpillar, and on and on, they are screwed. You’re not an evil killer for building that house, you and we all just dont value the life of these creatures on that spot. Again no terminator in this scenario, but from the perspective of the rabbits there is a giant machine destroying their livelihood, and there is nothing they can do about it. Then when all the destruction is done some mysterious weird smelling grew liquid is pored in, gallons of the stuff, and when it dries it turns into a giant rock. Insane right? So here’s the a.s.i. without alignment solved, we ask it to built houses for us as quickly and efficiently as possible. It changes the atmosphere to a mix where the concrete will harden more quickly. There is no more oxygen, also no terminator, but every human being is dead. SO lets fix alignment, how do we make it care for us humans and not make it lie to us? submitted by /u/Snielsss
Originally posted by u/Snielsss on r/ArtificialInteligence