I assumed John was pointing at verifying that perhaps the chemicals used in the production of the chair might have some really bad impact on the environmnet, start causing a problem with the food chain eco system and make food much scarcers for everyone—including the person who bought the chair—in the meaningfully near future.
What I had in mind is more like: many times over the years I’ve been sitting at a desk and noticed my neck getting sore. Then when I move around a bit, I realize that the chair/desk/screen are positioned such that my neck is at an awkward angle when looking at the screen, which makes my neck sore when I hold that angle for a long time. The mispositioning isn’t very salient; I just reflexively adjust my neck to look at the screen and don’t notice that it’s at an awkward angle. Then later my neck hurts, and it’s nonobvious and takes some examination to figure out why my neck hurts.
That sort of thing, I claim, generalizes to most “ergonomics”. Chairs, keyboards, desks, mice… these are all often awkward in ways which make us uncomfortable when using them for a long time. But the awkwardness isn’t very salient or obvious (for most people), because we just automatically adjust position to handle it, and the discomfort only comes much later from holding that awkward position for a long time.
I agree ergonimics can be hard to verify. But some ergonomics are easy to verify, and chairs conform to those ergonomics (e.g. having a backrest is good, not having sharp stabby parts are good, etc.).
I mean, sure, for any given X there will be some desirable properties of X which are easy to verify, and it’s usually pretty easy to outsource the creation of an X which satisfies the easy-to-verify properties. The problem is that the easy-to-verify properties do not typically include all the properties which are important to us. Ergonomics is a very typical example.
Extending to AI: sure, there will be some desirable properties of AI which are easy to verify, or properties of alignment research which are easy to verify, or properties of plans which are easy to verify, etc. And it will be easy to outsource the creation of AI/research/plans which satisfy those easy-to-verify properties. Alas, the easy-to-verify properties do not include all the properties which are important to us, or even all the properties needed to not die.
I think there are some easy-to-verify properties that would make us more likely to die if they were hard-to-verify. And therefore think “verification is easier than generation” is an important part of the overall landscape of AI risk.
What I had in mind is more like: many times over the years I’ve been sitting at a desk and noticed my neck getting sore. Then when I move around a bit, I realize that the chair/desk/screen are positioned such that my neck is at an awkward angle when looking at the screen, which makes my neck sore when I hold that angle for a long time. The mispositioning isn’t very salient; I just reflexively adjust my neck to look at the screen and don’t notice that it’s at an awkward angle. Then later my neck hurts, and it’s nonobvious and takes some examination to figure out why my neck hurts.
That sort of thing, I claim, generalizes to most “ergonomics”. Chairs, keyboards, desks, mice… these are all often awkward in ways which make us uncomfortable when using them for a long time. But the awkwardness isn’t very salient or obvious (for most people), because we just automatically adjust position to handle it, and the discomfort only comes much later from holding that awkward position for a long time.
I agree ergonimics can be hard to verify. But some ergonomics are easy to verify, and chairs conform to those ergonomics (e.g. having a backrest is good, not having sharp stabby parts are good, etc.).
I mean, sure, for any given X there will be some desirable properties of X which are easy to verify, and it’s usually pretty easy to outsource the creation of an X which satisfies the easy-to-verify properties. The problem is that the easy-to-verify properties do not typically include all the properties which are important to us. Ergonomics is a very typical example.
Extending to AI: sure, there will be some desirable properties of AI which are easy to verify, or properties of alignment research which are easy to verify, or properties of plans which are easy to verify, etc. And it will be easy to outsource the creation of AI/research/plans which satisfy those easy-to-verify properties. Alas, the easy-to-verify properties do not include all the properties which are important to us, or even all the properties needed to not die.
I think there are some easy-to-verify properties that would make us more likely to die if they were hard-to-verify. And therefore think “verification is easier than generation” is an important part of the overall landscape of AI risk.
That is certainly a more directly related, non-obvious aspect for verification. Thanks.