How useful AI-systems can be at this sort of thing after becoming catastrophically dangerous is also worth discussing more than is done at present. At least I think so. Between Eliezer and me I think maybe that’s the biggest crux (my intuitions about FOOM are Eliezer-like I think, although AFAIK I’m more unsure/agnostic regarding that than he is).
Obviously a more favorable situation if AGI-system is aligned before it could destroy the world. But even if we think we succeeded with alignment prior to superintelligence (and possible FOOM), we should look for ways it can help with alignment afterwards, so as to provide additional security/alignment-assurance.
As Paul points out, verification will often be a lot easier than generation, and I think techniques that leverage this (also with superintelligent systems that may not be aligned) is underdiscussed. And how easy/hard if would be for an AGI-system to trick us (into thinking it’s being helpful when it really wasn’t) would depend a lot on how we went about things.
Various potential ways of getting help for alignment while keeping “channels of causality” quite limited and verifying the work/output of the AI-system in powerful ways.
How useful AI-systems can be at this sort of thing after becoming catastrophically dangerous is also worth discussing more than is done at present. At least I think so. Between Eliezer and me I think maybe that’s the biggest crux (my intuitions about FOOM are Eliezer-like I think, although AFAIK I’m more unsure/agnostic regarding that than he is).
Obviously a more favorable situation if AGI-system is aligned before it could destroy the world. But even if we think we succeeded with alignment prior to superintelligence (and possible FOOM), we should look for ways it can help with alignment afterwards, so as to provide additional security/alignment-assurance.
As Paul points out, verification will often be a lot easier than generation, and I think techniques that leverage this (also with superintelligent systems that may not be aligned) is underdiscussed. And how easy/hard if would be for an AGI-system to trick us (into thinking it’s being helpful when it really wasn’t) would depend a lot on how we went about things.
Various potential ways of getting help for alignment while keeping “channels of causality” quite limited and verifying the work/output of the AI-system in powerful ways.
I’ve started on a series about this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZmZBataeY58anJRBb/getting-from-unaligned-to-aligned-agi-assisted-alignment