E.g., suppose an AGI attempts to explain its ethics and goals to me
“Suppose an AGI attempts to explain its and to me” is what I expect it to sound like to humans if we were to replace human abstractions with those an advanced AGI would use. It would not even call these abstractions “ethics” or “goals”, no more than we call ethics “groom” and goals “sex” when talking to a chimp.
suppose an AGI attempts to explain its ethics and goals to me, and at the end of that process it generates thousand-word descriptions of N future worlds and asks me to rank them in order of its preferences as I understand them.
I do not expect it to be able to generate such descriptions at all, due to the limitations of the human mind and human language. So, yes, our expectations differ here. I do not think that human intelligence reached some magical threshold where everything can be explained to it, given enough effort, even though it was not possible with “less advanced” animals. For all I know, I am not even using the right terms. Maybe an AGI improvement on the term “explain” is incomprehensible to us. Like if we were to translate “explain” into chimp or cat it would come out as “show”, or something.
(shrug) Translating the terms is rather beside my point here.
If the AGI is using these things to choose among possible future worlds, then I expect it to be able to teach me to choose among possible future worlds more like it does than I would without that explanation.
I’m happy to call those things goals, ethics, morality, etc., even if those words don’t capture what the AGI means by them. (I don’t know that they really capture what I mean by them either, come to that.) Perhaps I would do better to call them “groom” or “fleem” or “untranslatable1” or refer to them by means of a specific shade of orange. I don’t know; but as I say, I don’t really care; terminology is largely independent of explanation.
But, sure, if you expect that it’s incapable of doing that, then our expectations differ.
I’ll note that my expectations don’t depend on my having reached a magical threshold, or on everything being explainable to me given enough effort.
“Suppose an AGI attempts to explain its and to me” is what I expect it to sound like to humans if we were to replace human abstractions with those an advanced AGI would use. It would not even call these abstractions “ethics” or “goals”, no more than we call ethics “groom” and goals “sex” when talking to a chimp.
I do not expect it to be able to generate such descriptions at all, due to the limitations of the human mind and human language. So, yes, our expectations differ here. I do not think that human intelligence reached some magical threshold where everything can be explained to it, given enough effort, even though it was not possible with “less advanced” animals. For all I know, I am not even using the right terms. Maybe an AGI improvement on the term “explain” is incomprehensible to us. Like if we were to translate “explain” into chimp or cat it would come out as “show”, or something.
(shrug) Translating the terms is rather beside my point here.
If the AGI is using these things to choose among possible future worlds, then I expect it to be able to teach me to choose among possible future worlds more like it does than I would without that explanation.
I’m happy to call those things goals, ethics, morality, etc., even if those words don’t capture what the AGI means by them. (I don’t know that they really capture what I mean by them either, come to that.) Perhaps I would do better to call them “groom” or “fleem” or “untranslatable1” or refer to them by means of a specific shade of orange. I don’t know; but as I say, I don’t really care; terminology is largely independent of explanation.
But, sure, if you expect that it’s incapable of doing that, then our expectations differ.
I’ll note that my expectations don’t depend on my having reached a magical threshold, or on everything being explainable to me given enough effort.