Imagine a human who has a preference to not live beyond a hundred years. However, they want to live to next year, and it’s predictable that every year they are alive, they will have the same desire to survive till the next year.
This human (not a completely implausible example, I hope!) has a contradiction between their long and short term preferences. So which is accurate? It seems we could resolve these preferences in favour of the short term (“live forever”) or the long term (“die after a century”) preferences.
Now, at this point, maybe we could appeal to meta-preferences—what would the human themselves want, if they could choose? But often these meta-preferences are un- or under-formed, and can be influenced by how the question or debate is framed.
Specifically, suppose we are scheduling this human’s agenda. We have the choice of making them meet one of two philosophers (not meeting anyone is not an option). If they meet Professor R. T. Long, he will advise them to follow long term preferences. If instead, they meet Paul Kurtz, he will advise them to pay attention their short term preferences. Whichever one they meet, they will argue for a while and will then settle on the recommended preference resolution. And then they will not change that, whoever they meet subsequently.
Since we are doing the scheduling, we effectively control the human’s meta-preferences on this issue. What should we do? And what principles should we use to do so?
It’s clear that this can apply to AIs: if they are simultaneously aiding humans as well as learning their preferences, they will have multiple opportunities to do this sort of preference-shaping.
Humans are not agents: short vs long term
Crossposted at the Intelligent Agents Forum.
This is an example of humans not being (idealised) agents.
Imagine a human who has a preference to not live beyond a hundred years. However, they want to live to next year, and it’s predictable that every year they are alive, they will have the same desire to survive till the next year.
This human (not a completely implausible example, I hope!) has a contradiction between their long and short term preferences. So which is accurate? It seems we could resolve these preferences in favour of the short term (“live forever”) or the long term (“die after a century”) preferences.
Now, at this point, maybe we could appeal to meta-preferences—what would the human themselves want, if they could choose? But often these meta-preferences are un- or under-formed, and can be influenced by how the question or debate is framed.
Specifically, suppose we are scheduling this human’s agenda. We have the choice of making them meet one of two philosophers (not meeting anyone is not an option). If they meet Professor R. T. Long, he will advise them to follow long term preferences. If instead, they meet Paul Kurtz, he will advise them to pay attention their short term preferences. Whichever one they meet, they will argue for a while and will then settle on the recommended preference resolution. And then they will not change that, whoever they meet subsequently.
Since we are doing the scheduling, we effectively control the human’s meta-preferences on this issue. What should we do? And what principles should we use to do so?
It’s clear that this can apply to AIs: if they are simultaneously aiding humans as well as learning their preferences, they will have multiple opportunities to do this sort of preference-shaping.