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>the imaginary AGI needs "aligned values?" Aligned with whose values? This is something that is pretty well addressed in their writings and is definitely a hea

>the imaginary AGI needs "aligned values?" Aligned with whose values? This is something that is pretty well addressed in their writings and is definitely a heavily considered topic. It gets quite heavily into philosophy because ideally you want to count future-you's preferences as well as current-you and you want to avoid, say, genocide just because most people dislike a certain group. A good place to start is here: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/coherent-extrapolated-volition https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/coherent-extrapolated-volition but there is a LOT of discussion of this topic.

Miraste 4y ago
I'm familiar with the Yudkowsky school of thought here; it's largely where my complaint about basing philosophy off of sci-fi stories comes from. Picking on some of the more obviously inane ideas that have come out of it, like Roko's Basilisk, is too easy, but the page you linked is a great example of the problem. I quote in full: "In calculating CEV, an AI would predict what an idealized version of us would want, "if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together". It would recursively iterate this prediction for humanity as a whole, and determine the desires which converge. This initial dynamic would be used to generate the AI's utility function." This is too detached from the reality of AI development to be useful. I can't make a utility function like this, nor can you, nor can humanity. There's no reason to think a human-equivalent AI could either - the data for such a function doesn't exist, and can't exist because of how vague all the terms are. The current ML revolution is built on statistical pattern recognition. This definition would better fit a genie. The fact that MIRI does no ML research and has no dialogue with the state of the craft only furthers my impression that it produces a lot of words with little substance. Even if one still accepts the ultimate conclusions of the movement, using its AGI-focused rhetoric to justify restrictions on a simple image generator is silly.
- mach1ne 4y ago
  I wouldn't make too restricted assumptions on the form of a future AGI though. I find theoretical projections from a more axiomatic level quite important. It's like making rules for nukes before they were invented by assuming an abstract apocalypse-capable weapon without knowledge of missiles or nuclear fission. That being said, the absolute majority of AI safety theory seems to fall into the same pothole where philosophy falls; modelling the world through language-logic rather than probabilities. The example you quoted fits this category - it's way too specific and thus unlikely to be useful in any way, even though its wording may deceive its author to believe it to be an inescapable outcome.

Miraste 4y ago

I'm familiar with the Yudkowsky school of thought here; it's largely where my complaint about basing philosophy off of sci-fi stories comes from. Picking on some of the more obviously inane ideas that have come out of it, like Roko's Basilisk, is too easy, but the page you linked is a great example of the problem. I quote in full: "In calculating CEV, an AI would predict what an idealized version of us would want, "if we knew more, thought faster, were more the people we wished we were, had grown up farther together". It would recursively iterate this prediction for humanity as a whole, and determine the desires which converge. This initial dynamic would be used to generate the AI's utility function." This is too detached from the reality of AI development to be useful. I can't make a utility function like this, nor can you, nor can humanity. There's no reason to think a human-equivalent AI could either - the data for such a function doesn't exist, and can't exist because of how vague all the terms are. The current ML revolution is built on statistical pattern recognition. This definition would better fit a genie. The fact that MIRI does no ML research and has no dialogue with the state of the craft only furthers my impression that it produces a lot of words with little substance. Even if one still accepts the ultimate conclusions of the movement, using its AGI-focused rhetoric to justify restrictions on a simple image generator is silly.

mach1ne 4y ago
I wouldn't make too restricted assumptions on the form of a future AGI though. I find theoretical projections from a more axiomatic level quite important. It's like making rules for nukes before they were invented by assuming an abstract apocalypse-capable weapon without knowledge of missiles or nuclear fission. That being said, the absolute majority of AI safety theory seems to fall into the same pothole where philosophy falls; modelling the world through language-logic rather than probabilities. The example you quoted fits this category - it's way too specific and thus unlikely to be useful in any way, even though its wording may deceive its author to believe it to be an inescapable outcome.