Do you value the same things as your great grandfather? What we value changes from generation to generation. We don’t really know how to impart our values on our children.
Does America value the same things as its founders did? Do companies share their founders’ visions? We don’t know how to build institutions that faithfully carry our values into the future.
The same is true of AI. We don’t know how to make it share our values. None of this is intrinsic to AI; imparting values is just a hard problem. Values are hard to clearly explain, and our explanations rely heavily on context.
We have to try though. AI’s will be extraordinarily powerful, and in a century our world will strongly reflect whatever AI’s ends up valuing, for better or worse. American values shaped the 20th century, and AI values will shape the 22nd.
Targeting policymakers: