Your comment makes me think that I might have been unclear regarding what I mean with ATA. The text below is an attempt to clarify.
Summary
Not all paths to powerful autonomous AI go through methods from the current paradigm. It seems difficult to rule out the possibility that a Sovereign AI will eventually be successfully aligned to some specific alignment target. At current levels of progress on ATA this would be very dangerous (because understanding an alignment target properly is difficult, and a seemingly-nice proposal can imply a very bad outcome). It is difficult to predict how long it would take to reach the level of understanding needed to prevent scenarios where a project successfully hits a bad alignment target. And there might not be a lot of time to do ATA later (for example because a tool-AI shuts down all unauthorised AI projects. But does not buy a lot of time due to internal time pressure). So a research effort should start now.
Therefore ATA is one of the current priorities. There are definitely very serious risks that ATA cannot help with (for example misaligned tool-AI projects resulting in extinction). There are also other important current priorities (such as preventing misuse). But ATA is one of the things that should be worked on now.
The next section outlines a few scenarios designed to clarify how I use the term ATA. The section after that outlines a scenario designed to show why I think that ATA work should start now.
What I mean with Alignment Target Analysis (ATA)
The basic idea with ATA is to try to figure out what would happen if a given AI project were to successfully align an autonomously acting AI Sovereign to a given alignment target. The way I use the term, there are very severe risks that cannot be reduced in any way, by any level of ATA progress (including some very serious misalignment and misuse risks). But there are also risks that can and should be reduced by doing ATA now. There might not be a lot of time to do ATA later, and it is not clear how long it will take to advance to the level of understanding that will be needed. So ATA should be happening now. But let’s start by clarifying the term ATA, by outlining a couple of dangerous AI projects where ATA would have nothing to say.
Consider Bill, who plans to use methods from the current paradigm to build a tool-AI. Bill plans to use this tool AI to shut down competing AI projects and then decide what to do next. ATA has nothing at all to say about this situation. Let’s say that Bill’s project plan would lead to a powerful misaligned AI that would cause extinction. No level of ATA progress would reduce this risk.
Consider Bob who also wants to build a tool-AI. But Bob’s AI would work. If the project would go ahead, then Bob would gain a lot of power. And Bob would use that power to do some very bad things. ATA has nothing to say about this project and ATA cannot help reduce this risk.
Now let’s introduce an unusual ATA scenario, just barely within the limits of what ATA can be used for (the next section will give an example of the types of scenarios that makes me think that ATA should be done now. This scenario is meant to clarify what I mean with ATA). Consider Dave who wants to use methods from the current paradigm to implement PCEV. If the project plan moves forwards, then the actual result would be a powerful misaligned AI: Dave’s Misaligned AI (DMAI). DMAI would not care at all what Dave is trying to do, and would cause extinction (for reasons that are unrelated to what Dave was aiming at). One way to reduce the extinction risk from DMAI would be to tell Dave that his plan would lead to DMAI. But it would also be valid to let Dave know that if his project were to successfully hit the alignment target that he is aiming for, then the outcome would be massively worse than extinction.
Dave assumes that he might succeed. So, when arguing against Dave’s project, it is entirely reasonable to argue from the assumption that Dave’s project will lead to PCEV. Pointing out that success would be extremely bad is a valid argument against Dave’s plan, even if success is not actually possible.
You can argue against Dave’s project by pointing out that the project will in fact fail. Or by pointing out that success would be very bad. Both of these strategies can be used to reduce the risk of extinction. And both strategies are cooperative (if Dave is a well meaning and reasonable person, then he would thank you for pointing out either of these aspects of his plan). While both strategies can prevent extinction in a fully cooperative way, they are also different in important ways. It might be the case that only one of these arguments is realistically findable in time. It might for example be the case that Dave is only willing to publish one part of his plan (meaning that there might not be sufficient public information to construct an argument about the other part of the plan). And even if valid arguments of both types are constructed in time, it might still be the case that Dave will only accept one of these arguments. (similar considerations are also relevant for less cooperative situations. For example if one is trying to convince a government to shut down Dave’s project. Or if one is trying to convince an electorate to vote no on a referendum that Dave needs to win in order to get permission to move forwards)
The audience in question (Dave, bureaucrats, voters, etc) are only considering the plan because they believe that it might result in PCEV. Therefore it is entirely valid to reason from the assumption that Dave’s plan will result in PCEV (when one is arguing against the plan). There is no logical reason why such an argument would interfere with attempts to argue that Dave’s plan would in fact result in DMAI.
Now let’s use an analogy from the 2004 CEV document to clarify what role I see an ATA project playing. In this analogy, building an AI Sovereign is analogous to taking power in a political revolution. So (in the analogy) Dave proposes a political revolution. One way a revolution can end in disaster is that the revolution leads to a destructive civil war that the revolutionaries loose (analogous to DMAI causing extinction). Another way a revolution can end in disaster is that ISIS takes power after the government is overthrown (analogous to the outcome implied by PCEV).
It is entirely valid to say to Dave: ``if you actually do manage to overthrow the government, then ISIS will seize power″ (assuming that this conditional is true). One can do this regardless of whether or not one thinks that Dave has any real chance of overthrowing the government. (Which in turn means that one can actually say this to Dave, without spending a lot of time trying to determine the probability that the revolution will in fact overthrow the government. Which in turn means that people with wildly different views on how difficult it is to overthrow the government can cooperate while formulating such an argument)
(this argument can be made separately from an argument along the lines of: ``our far larger neighbour has a huge army and would never allow the government of our country to be overthrown. Your revolution will fail even if every single soldier in our country joins you instantly. Entirely separately: the army of our county is in fact fiercely loyal to the government and you don’t have enough weapons to defeat it. In addition to these two points: you are clearly bad at strategic thinking and would be outmanoeuvred in a civil war by any semi-competent opponent″. This line of argument can also prevent a hopeless civil war. The two arguments can be made separately and there is no logical reason for them to interfere with each other)
Analysing revolutionary movements in terms of what success would mean can only help in some scenarios. It requires a non-vague description of what should happen after the government falls. In general: this type of analysis cannot reduce the probability of lost civil wars, in cases where the post revolutionary strategy is either (i): too vaguely described to analyse, or (ii): actually sound (meaning that the only problem with the revolution in question is that it has no chance of success). Conversely however: arguments based on revolutions failing to overthrow the government cannot prevent revolutions that would actually end with ISIS in charge (analogous to AI projects that would successfully hit a bad alignment target). Scenarios that end in a bad alignment target getting successfully hit is the main reason that I think that ATA should happen now (in the analogy, the main point would be to reduce the probability of ISIS gaining power). Now let’s leave the revolution analogy and outline one such scenario.
A tool-AI capable of shutting down all unauthorised AI projects might not buy a lot of time
It is difficult to predict who might end up controlling a tool-AI. But one obvious compromise would be to put it under the control of some group of voters (for example a global electorate). Let’s say that the tool-AI is designed such that one needs a two thirds majority in a referendum, to be allowed to launch a Sovereign AI. There exists a Sovereign AI proposal that a large majority thinks sounds nice. A small minority would however prefer a different proposal.
In order to prevent inadvertent manipulation risks, the tool AI was designed to only discuss topics that are absolutely necessary for the process of shutting down unauthorised AI projects. Someone figures out how to make the tool-AI explain how to implement Sovereign AI proposals (and Explanation / Manipulation related definitions happens to hold for such discussions). But no one figures out how to get it to discuss any topic along the lines of ATA. The original plan was to take an extended period of time to work on ATA before implementing a Sovereign AI.
Both alignment targets use the same method for extrapolating people and for resolving disagreements. The difference is in terms of who is part of the initial group. The two proposals have different rules with respect to things like: animals, people in cryo, foetuses, artificial minds, etc. It doesn’t actually matter which proposal gets implemented: the aggregation method leads to the same horrific outcome in both cases (due to an issue along the lines of the issue that PCEV suffers from. But more subtle and difficult to notice). (All proposed alignment targets along the lines of ``build an AI Sovereign that would do whatever some specific individual wants it to do″ are rejected out of hand by almost everyone).
In order to avoid making the present post political, let’s say that political debates center around what to do with ecosystems. One side cares about nature and wants to protect ecosystems. The other side wants to prevent animal suffering (even if the cost of such prevention is the total destruction of every ecosystem on earth). It is widely assumed that including animals in the original group will lead to an outcome where animal suffering is prevented at the expense of ecosystems. (in order to make the following scenario more intuitive, readers that have an opinion regarding what should be done with ecosystems, can imagine that the majority shares this opinion)
The majority has enough support to launch their Sovereign AI. But the minority is rapidly and steadily gaining followers due to ordinary political dynamics (sometimes attitudes on a given issue changes steadily in a predictable direction). So the ability to get the preferred alignment target implemented can disappear permanently at any moment (the exact number of people that would actually vote yes in a referendum is difficult to estimate. But it is clearly shrinking rapidly). In this case the majority might act before they loose the ability to act. Part of the majority would however hesitate if the flaw with the aggregation method is noticed in time.
After the tool-AI was implemented, a large number of people started to work on ATA. There are also AI assistants that contribute to conceptual progress (they are tolerated by the tool-AI because they are not smarter than humans. And they are useful because they contribute a set of unique non-human perspectives). However, it turns out that ATA progress works sort of like math progress. It can be sped up significantly by lots of people working on it in parallel. But the main determinant of progress is how long people have been working on it. In other words: it turns out that there is a limit to how much the underlying conceptual progress can be sped up by throwing large numbers of people at ATA. So the question of whether or not the issue with the Sovereign AI proposal is noticed in time, is to a large degree determined by how long a serious ATA research project has been going on at the time that the tool-AI is launched (in other words: doing ATA now reduces the risk of a bad alignment target ending up getting successfully hit in this scenario).
(the idea is not that this exact scenario will play out as described. The point of this section was to give a detailed description of one specific scenario. For example: the world will presumably not actually be engulfed by debates about the Prime Directive from Star Trek. And a tool-AI controlled by a messy coalition of governments might lead to a time crunch due to dynamics that are more related to Realpolitik than any form of ideology. This specific scenario is just one example of a large set of similar scenarios)
PS:
On a common sense level I simply don’t see how one can think that it is safe to stay at our current level of ATA progress (where it is clearly not possible to reliably tell a good alignment target from an alignment target that implies an outcome massively worse than extinction). The fact that there exists no research project dedicated to improving this situation seems like a mistake. Intuitively this seems like a dangerous situation. At the very least it seems like some form of positive argument would be needed before concluding that this is safe. And it seems like such an argument should be published so that it can be checked for flaws before one starts acting based on the assumption that the current situation is safe. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with theories / questions / thoughts / observations / etc regarding what people actually believe about this.
Your comment makes me think that I might have been unclear regarding what I mean with ATA. The text below is an attempt to clarify.
Summary
Not all paths to powerful autonomous AI go through methods from the current paradigm. It seems difficult to rule out the possibility that a Sovereign AI will eventually be successfully aligned to some specific alignment target. At current levels of progress on ATA this would be very dangerous (because understanding an alignment target properly is difficult, and a seemingly-nice proposal can imply a very bad outcome). It is difficult to predict how long it would take to reach the level of understanding needed to prevent scenarios where a project successfully hits a bad alignment target. And there might not be a lot of time to do ATA later (for example because a tool-AI shuts down all unauthorised AI projects. But does not buy a lot of time due to internal time pressure). So a research effort should start now.
Therefore ATA is one of the current priorities. There are definitely very serious risks that ATA cannot help with (for example misaligned tool-AI projects resulting in extinction). There are also other important current priorities (such as preventing misuse). But ATA is one of the things that should be worked on now.
The next section outlines a few scenarios designed to clarify how I use the term ATA. The section after that outlines a scenario designed to show why I think that ATA work should start now.
What I mean with Alignment Target Analysis (ATA)
The basic idea with ATA is to try to figure out what would happen if a given AI project were to successfully align an autonomously acting AI Sovereign to a given alignment target. The way I use the term, there are very severe risks that cannot be reduced in any way, by any level of ATA progress (including some very serious misalignment and misuse risks). But there are also risks that can and should be reduced by doing ATA now. There might not be a lot of time to do ATA later, and it is not clear how long it will take to advance to the level of understanding that will be needed. So ATA should be happening now. But let’s start by clarifying the term ATA, by outlining a couple of dangerous AI projects where ATA would have nothing to say.
Consider Bill, who plans to use methods from the current paradigm to build a tool-AI. Bill plans to use this tool AI to shut down competing AI projects and then decide what to do next. ATA has nothing at all to say about this situation. Let’s say that Bill’s project plan would lead to a powerful misaligned AI that would cause extinction. No level of ATA progress would reduce this risk.
Consider Bob who also wants to build a tool-AI. But Bob’s AI would work. If the project would go ahead, then Bob would gain a lot of power. And Bob would use that power to do some very bad things. ATA has nothing to say about this project and ATA cannot help reduce this risk.
Now let’s introduce an unusual ATA scenario, just barely within the limits of what ATA can be used for (the next section will give an example of the types of scenarios that makes me think that ATA should be done now. This scenario is meant to clarify what I mean with ATA). Consider Dave who wants to use methods from the current paradigm to implement PCEV. If the project plan moves forwards, then the actual result would be a powerful misaligned AI: Dave’s Misaligned AI (DMAI). DMAI would not care at all what Dave is trying to do, and would cause extinction (for reasons that are unrelated to what Dave was aiming at). One way to reduce the extinction risk from DMAI would be to tell Dave that his plan would lead to DMAI. But it would also be valid to let Dave know that if his project were to successfully hit the alignment target that he is aiming for, then the outcome would be massively worse than extinction.
Dave assumes that he might succeed. So, when arguing against Dave’s project, it is entirely reasonable to argue from the assumption that Dave’s project will lead to PCEV. Pointing out that success would be extremely bad is a valid argument against Dave’s plan, even if success is not actually possible.
You can argue against Dave’s project by pointing out that the project will in fact fail. Or by pointing out that success would be very bad. Both of these strategies can be used to reduce the risk of extinction. And both strategies are cooperative (if Dave is a well meaning and reasonable person, then he would thank you for pointing out either of these aspects of his plan). While both strategies can prevent extinction in a fully cooperative way, they are also different in important ways. It might be the case that only one of these arguments is realistically findable in time. It might for example be the case that Dave is only willing to publish one part of his plan (meaning that there might not be sufficient public information to construct an argument about the other part of the plan). And even if valid arguments of both types are constructed in time, it might still be the case that Dave will only accept one of these arguments. (similar considerations are also relevant for less cooperative situations. For example if one is trying to convince a government to shut down Dave’s project. Or if one is trying to convince an electorate to vote no on a referendum that Dave needs to win in order to get permission to move forwards)
The audience in question (Dave, bureaucrats, voters, etc) are only considering the plan because they believe that it might result in PCEV. Therefore it is entirely valid to reason from the assumption that Dave’s plan will result in PCEV (when one is arguing against the plan). There is no logical reason why such an argument would interfere with attempts to argue that Dave’s plan would in fact result in DMAI.
Now let’s use an analogy from the 2004 CEV document to clarify what role I see an ATA project playing. In this analogy, building an AI Sovereign is analogous to taking power in a political revolution. So (in the analogy) Dave proposes a political revolution. One way a revolution can end in disaster is that the revolution leads to a destructive civil war that the revolutionaries loose (analogous to DMAI causing extinction). Another way a revolution can end in disaster is that ISIS takes power after the government is overthrown (analogous to the outcome implied by PCEV).
It is entirely valid to say to Dave: ``if you actually do manage to overthrow the government, then ISIS will seize power″ (assuming that this conditional is true). One can do this regardless of whether or not one thinks that Dave has any real chance of overthrowing the government. (Which in turn means that one can actually say this to Dave, without spending a lot of time trying to determine the probability that the revolution will in fact overthrow the government. Which in turn means that people with wildly different views on how difficult it is to overthrow the government can cooperate while formulating such an argument)
(this argument can be made separately from an argument along the lines of: ``our far larger neighbour has a huge army and would never allow the government of our country to be overthrown. Your revolution will fail even if every single soldier in our country joins you instantly. Entirely separately: the army of our county is in fact fiercely loyal to the government and you don’t have enough weapons to defeat it. In addition to these two points: you are clearly bad at strategic thinking and would be outmanoeuvred in a civil war by any semi-competent opponent″. This line of argument can also prevent a hopeless civil war. The two arguments can be made separately and there is no logical reason for them to interfere with each other)
Analysing revolutionary movements in terms of what success would mean can only help in some scenarios. It requires a non-vague description of what should happen after the government falls. In general: this type of analysis cannot reduce the probability of lost civil wars, in cases where the post revolutionary strategy is either (i): too vaguely described to analyse, or (ii): actually sound (meaning that the only problem with the revolution in question is that it has no chance of success). Conversely however: arguments based on revolutions failing to overthrow the government cannot prevent revolutions that would actually end with ISIS in charge (analogous to AI projects that would successfully hit a bad alignment target). Scenarios that end in a bad alignment target getting successfully hit is the main reason that I think that ATA should happen now (in the analogy, the main point would be to reduce the probability of ISIS gaining power). Now let’s leave the revolution analogy and outline one such scenario.
A tool-AI capable of shutting down all unauthorised AI projects might not buy a lot of time
It is difficult to predict who might end up controlling a tool-AI. But one obvious compromise would be to put it under the control of some group of voters (for example a global electorate). Let’s say that the tool-AI is designed such that one needs a two thirds majority in a referendum, to be allowed to launch a Sovereign AI. There exists a Sovereign AI proposal that a large majority thinks sounds nice. A small minority would however prefer a different proposal.
In order to prevent inadvertent manipulation risks, the tool AI was designed to only discuss topics that are absolutely necessary for the process of shutting down unauthorised AI projects. Someone figures out how to make the tool-AI explain how to implement Sovereign AI proposals (and Explanation / Manipulation related definitions happens to hold for such discussions). But no one figures out how to get it to discuss any topic along the lines of ATA. The original plan was to take an extended period of time to work on ATA before implementing a Sovereign AI.
Both alignment targets use the same method for extrapolating people and for resolving disagreements. The difference is in terms of who is part of the initial group. The two proposals have different rules with respect to things like: animals, people in cryo, foetuses, artificial minds, etc. It doesn’t actually matter which proposal gets implemented: the aggregation method leads to the same horrific outcome in both cases (due to an issue along the lines of the issue that PCEV suffers from. But more subtle and difficult to notice). (All proposed alignment targets along the lines of ``build an AI Sovereign that would do whatever some specific individual wants it to do″ are rejected out of hand by almost everyone).
In order to avoid making the present post political, let’s say that political debates center around what to do with ecosystems. One side cares about nature and wants to protect ecosystems. The other side wants to prevent animal suffering (even if the cost of such prevention is the total destruction of every ecosystem on earth). It is widely assumed that including animals in the original group will lead to an outcome where animal suffering is prevented at the expense of ecosystems. (in order to make the following scenario more intuitive, readers that have an opinion regarding what should be done with ecosystems, can imagine that the majority shares this opinion)
The majority has enough support to launch their Sovereign AI. But the minority is rapidly and steadily gaining followers due to ordinary political dynamics (sometimes attitudes on a given issue changes steadily in a predictable direction). So the ability to get the preferred alignment target implemented can disappear permanently at any moment (the exact number of people that would actually vote yes in a referendum is difficult to estimate. But it is clearly shrinking rapidly). In this case the majority might act before they loose the ability to act. Part of the majority would however hesitate if the flaw with the aggregation method is noticed in time.
After the tool-AI was implemented, a large number of people started to work on ATA. There are also AI assistants that contribute to conceptual progress (they are tolerated by the tool-AI because they are not smarter than humans. And they are useful because they contribute a set of unique non-human perspectives). However, it turns out that ATA progress works sort of like math progress. It can be sped up significantly by lots of people working on it in parallel. But the main determinant of progress is how long people have been working on it. In other words: it turns out that there is a limit to how much the underlying conceptual progress can be sped up by throwing large numbers of people at ATA. So the question of whether or not the issue with the Sovereign AI proposal is noticed in time, is to a large degree determined by how long a serious ATA research project has been going on at the time that the tool-AI is launched (in other words: doing ATA now reduces the risk of a bad alignment target ending up getting successfully hit in this scenario).
(the idea is not that this exact scenario will play out as described. The point of this section was to give a detailed description of one specific scenario. For example: the world will presumably not actually be engulfed by debates about the Prime Directive from Star Trek. And a tool-AI controlled by a messy coalition of governments might lead to a time crunch due to dynamics that are more related to Realpolitik than any form of ideology. This specific scenario is just one example of a large set of similar scenarios)
PS:
On a common sense level I simply don’t see how one can think that it is safe to stay at our current level of ATA progress (where it is clearly not possible to reliably tell a good alignment target from an alignment target that implies an outcome massively worse than extinction). The fact that there exists no research project dedicated to improving this situation seems like a mistake. Intuitively this seems like a dangerous situation. At the very least it seems like some form of positive argument would be needed before concluding that this is safe. And it seems like such an argument should be published so that it can be checked for flaws before one starts acting based on the assumption that the current situation is safe. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with theories / questions / thoughts / observations / etc regarding what people actually believe about this.