I certainly expect future AGI to have “learned meta-cognitive strategies” like “when I see this type of problem, maybe try this type of mental move”, and even things like “follow the advice in Cal Newport and use Anki and use Bayesian reasoning etc.” But I don’t see those as particularly relevant for alignment. Learning meta-cognitive strategies are like learning to use a screwdriver—it will help me accomplish my goals, but won’t change my goals (or at least, it won’t change my goals beyond the normal extent to which any new knowledge and experience could potentially cause goal drift.)
I do think that the “source code” for a human brains has a rather different set of affordances for search / planning than you’ll find in AlphaZero or babble-and-prune or PPO, but I’m not sure how relevant that is. In particular, can you say more about why you believe “The human source code won’t contain general-purpose search”?
Counter: The human source code won’t contain general-purpose search, it will contain something like babble-and-prune or gradient descent over trajectories or something, and so there is also the question of what to do about the general-purpose search component.
Thanks!
I certainly expect future AGI to have “learned meta-cognitive strategies” like “when I see this type of problem, maybe try this type of mental move”, and even things like “follow the advice in Cal Newport and use Anki and use Bayesian reasoning etc.” But I don’t see those as particularly relevant for alignment. Learning meta-cognitive strategies are like learning to use a screwdriver—it will help me accomplish my goals, but won’t change my goals (or at least, it won’t change my goals beyond the normal extent to which any new knowledge and experience could potentially cause goal drift.)
I do think that the “source code” for a human brains has a rather different set of affordances for search / planning than you’ll find in AlphaZero or babble-and-prune or PPO, but I’m not sure how relevant that is. In particular, can you say more about why you believe “The human source code won’t contain general-purpose search”?