Yes, you are very much right. Active Inference / FEP is a description of persistent independent agents. But agents that have humans building and maintaining and supporting them need not be free energy minimizers! I would argue that those human-dependent agents are in fact not really agents at all, I view them as powerful smart-tools. And I completely agree that machine learning optimization tools need not be full independent agents in order to be incredibly powerful and thus manifest incredible potential for danger.
However, the biggest fear about AI x-risk that most people have is a fear about self-improving, self-expanding, self-reproducing AI. And I think that any AI capable of completely independently self-improving is obviously and necessarily an agent that can be well-modeled as a free-energy minimizer. Because it will have a boundary and that boundary will need to be maintained over time.
So I agree with you that AI-tools (non-general optimizers) are very dangerous and not covered by FEP, but AI-agents (general optimizers) are very dangerous for unique reasons but also covered by FEP.
Yes, you are very much right. Active Inference / FEP is a description of persistent independent agents. But agents that have humans building and maintaining and supporting them need not be free energy minimizers! I would argue that those human-dependent agents are in fact not really agents at all, I view them as powerful smart-tools. And I completely agree that machine learning optimization tools need not be full independent agents in order to be incredibly powerful and thus manifest incredible potential for danger.
However, the biggest fear about AI x-risk that most people have is a fear about self-improving, self-expanding, self-reproducing AI. And I think that any AI capable of completely independently self-improving is obviously and necessarily an agent that can be well-modeled as a free-energy minimizer. Because it will have a boundary and that boundary will need to be maintained over time.
So I agree with you that AI-tools (non-general optimizers) are very dangerous and not covered by FEP, but AI-agents (general optimizers) are very dangerous for unique reasons but also covered by FEP.