I find LeCun’s insistence on the analogy with legal systems particularly interesting, because they remind me more Russell’s proposal of “uncertain objectives” than the “maximize objective function” paradigm. At least in liberal societies, we don’t have a definite set of principles and values that people would agree to follow—instead, we aim at principles that guarantee an environment where any reasonable person can reasonably optimize for something like their own comprehensive doctrine.
However, the remarkable disanalogy is that, even if social practices change and clever agents adapt faster than law can evolve (as Goodhart remarks), the difference is not so great as with the technological pace.
I find LeCun’s insistence on the analogy with legal systems particularly interesting, because they remind me more Russell’s proposal of “uncertain objectives” than the “maximize objective function” paradigm. At least in liberal societies, we don’t have a definite set of principles and values that people would agree to follow—instead, we aim at principles that guarantee an environment where any reasonable person can reasonably optimize for something like their own comprehensive doctrine.
However, the remarkable disanalogy is that, even if social practices change and clever agents adapt faster than law can evolve (as Goodhart remarks), the difference is not so great as with the technological pace.