If we could create AI’s that follows the existing system of law and property rights (including the intent of the laws, and doesn’t exploit loopholes, and doesn’t maliciously comply with laws, and doesn’t try to get the law changed, etc.) then that would be a solution to the alignment problem, but the problem is that we don’t know how to do that.
I disagree that creating an agent that follows the existing system of law and property rights, and acts within it rather than trying to undermine it, would count as a solution to the alignment problem.
Imagine a man who only cared about himself and had no altruistic impulses whatsoever. However, this man reasoned that, “If I disrespect the rule of law, ruthlessly exploit loopholes in the legal system, and maliciously comply with the letter of the law while disregarding its intent, then other people will view me negatively and trust me less as a consequence. If I do that, then people will be less likely to want to become my trading partner, they’ll be less likely to sign onto long-term contracts with me, I might accidentally go to prison because of an adversarial prosecutor and an unsympathetic jury, and it will be harder to recruit social allies. These are all things that would be very selfishly costly. Therefore, for my own selfish benefit, I should generally abide by most widely established norms and moral rules in the modern world, including the norm of following intent of the law, rather than merely the letter of the law.”
From an outside perspective, this person would essentially be indistinguishable from a normal law-abiding citizen who cared about other people. Perhaps the main difference between this person and a “normal” person is that this man wouldn’t partake in much private altruism like donating to charity anonymously; but that type of behavior is rare anyway among the general public. Nonetheless, despite appearing outwardly-aligned, this person would be literally misaligned with the rest of humanity in a basic sense: they do not care about other people. If it were not instrumentally rational for this person to respect the rights of other citizens, they would have no issue throwing away someone else’s life for a dollar.
My basic point here is this: it is simply not true that misaligned agents have no incentive to obey the law. Misaligned agents typically have ample incentives to follow the law. Indeed, it has often been argued that the very purpose of law itself is to resolve disputes between misaligned agents. As James Madison once said, “If Men were angels, no government would be necessary.” His point is that, if we were all mutually aligned with each other, we would have no need for the coercive mechanism of the state in order to get along.
What’s true for humans could be true for AIs too. However, obviously, there is one key distinction: AIs could eventually become far more powerful than individual humans, or humanity-as-a-whole. Perhaps this means that future AIs will have strong incentives to break the law rather than abide by it; perhaps they will act outside a system of law rather than influencing the world from within a system of law? Many people on LessWrong seem to think so.
My response to this argument is multifaceted, and I won’t go into it in this comment. But suffice to say for the purpose of my response here, I think it is clear that mere misalignment is insufficient to imply that an agent will not adhere to the rule of law. This statement is clear enough with the example of the sociopathic man I gave above, and at minimum seems probably true for human-level AIs as well. I would appreciate if people gave more rigorous arguments otherwise.
As I see it, very few such rigorous arguments have so far been given for the position that future AIs will generally act outside of, rather than within, the existing system of law, in order to achieve their goals.
I disagree that creating an agent that follows the existing system of law and property rights, and acts within it rather than trying to undermine it, would count as a solution to the alignment problem.
Imagine a man who only cared about himself and had no altruistic impulses whatsoever. However, this man reasoned that, “If I disrespect the rule of law, ruthlessly exploit loopholes in the legal system, and maliciously comply with the letter of the law while disregarding its intent, then other people will view me negatively and trust me less as a consequence. If I do that, then people will be less likely to want to become my trading partner, they’ll be less likely to sign onto long-term contracts with me, I might accidentally go to prison because of an adversarial prosecutor and an unsympathetic jury, and it will be harder to recruit social allies. These are all things that would be very selfishly costly. Therefore, for my own selfish benefit, I should generally abide by most widely established norms and moral rules in the modern world, including the norm of following intent of the law, rather than merely the letter of the law.”
From an outside perspective, this person would essentially be indistinguishable from a normal law-abiding citizen who cared about other people. Perhaps the main difference between this person and a “normal” person is that this man wouldn’t partake in much private altruism like donating to charity anonymously; but that type of behavior is rare anyway among the general public. Nonetheless, despite appearing outwardly-aligned, this person would be literally misaligned with the rest of humanity in a basic sense: they do not care about other people. If it were not instrumentally rational for this person to respect the rights of other citizens, they would have no issue throwing away someone else’s life for a dollar.
My basic point here is this: it is simply not true that misaligned agents have no incentive to obey the law. Misaligned agents typically have ample incentives to follow the law. Indeed, it has often been argued that the very purpose of law itself is to resolve disputes between misaligned agents. As James Madison once said, “If Men were angels, no government would be necessary.” His point is that, if we were all mutually aligned with each other, we would have no need for the coercive mechanism of the state in order to get along.
What’s true for humans could be true for AIs too. However, obviously, there is one key distinction: AIs could eventually become far more powerful than individual humans, or humanity-as-a-whole. Perhaps this means that future AIs will have strong incentives to break the law rather than abide by it; perhaps they will act outside a system of law rather than influencing the world from within a system of law? Many people on LessWrong seem to think so.
My response to this argument is multifaceted, and I won’t go into it in this comment. But suffice to say for the purpose of my response here, I think it is clear that mere misalignment is insufficient to imply that an agent will not adhere to the rule of law. This statement is clear enough with the example of the sociopathic man I gave above, and at minimum seems probably true for human-level AIs as well. I would appreciate if people gave more rigorous arguments otherwise.
As I see it, very few such rigorous arguments have so far been given for the position that future AIs will generally act outside of, rather than within, the existing system of law, in order to achieve their goals.