Everything about the AGI, loosely speaking, has to be near-perfect except for that one bit.
Isn’t this exactly what happened with the GPT-2 bug, which led to maximally ‘bad’ output? Would that not suggest that the probability of this occurring with an AGI is non-negligible?
No. First, people thinking of creating an AGI from scratch (i.e., one comparable to the sort of AI you’re imagining) have already warned against this exact issue and talked about measures to prevent a simple change of one bit from having any effect. (It’s the problem you don’t spot that’ll kill you.)
Second, GPT-2 is not near-perfect. It does pretty well at a job it was never intended to do, but if we ignore that context it seems pretty flawed. Naturally, its output was nowhere near maximally bad. The program did indeed have a silly flaw, but I assume that’s because it’s more of a silly experiment than a model for AGI. Indeed, if I try to imagine making GPT-N dangerous, I come up with the idea of an artificial programmer that uses vaguely similar principles to auto-complete programs and could thus self-improve. Reversing the sign of its reward function would then make it produce garbage code or non-code, rendering it mostly harmless.
Again, it’s the subtle flaw you don’t spot in GPT-N that could produce an AI capable of killing you.
Isn’t this exactly what happened with the GPT-2 bug, which led to maximally ‘bad’ output? Would that not suggest that the probability of this occurring with an AGI is non-negligible?
No. First, people thinking of creating an AGI from scratch (i.e., one comparable to the sort of AI you’re imagining) have already warned against this exact issue and talked about measures to prevent a simple change of one bit from having any effect. (It’s the problem you don’t spot that’ll kill you.)
Second, GPT-2 is not near-perfect. It does pretty well at a job it was never intended to do, but if we ignore that context it seems pretty flawed. Naturally, its output was nowhere near maximally bad. The program did indeed have a silly flaw, but I assume that’s because it’s more of a silly experiment than a model for AGI. Indeed, if I try to imagine making GPT-N dangerous, I come up with the idea of an artificial programmer that uses vaguely similar principles to auto-complete programs and could thus self-improve. Reversing the sign of its reward function would then make it produce garbage code or non-code, rendering it mostly harmless.
Again, it’s the subtle flaw you don’t spot in GPT-N that could produce an AI capable of killing you.