It seemed like a common refrain a few years ago that we didn’t want to involve government in regulating AI because we didn’t know enough about what policy interventions would be counterproductive. Do you think that’s changed? What are the obvious things to look at for regulation?
I don’t think I’m yet at “here’s regulation that I’d just like to see”, but I think it’s really valuable to try to have discussions about what kind of regulation would be good or bad. At some point there will likely be regulation in this space, and it would be great if that was based on as deep an understanding as possible about possible regulatory levers, and their direct and indirect effects, and ultimate desirability.
I do think it’s pretty plausible that regulation about AI and truthfulness could end up being quite positive. But I don’t know enough to identify in exactly what circumstances it should apply, and I think we need a bit more groundwork on building and recognising truthful AI systems first. I guess quite a bit of our paper is trying to open the conversation on that.
Adding to this: AI is already being regulated. In the EU, you could argue that previous regulations (like GDPR) already had some impacts on AI, but regardless, the EU is now working on an AI Act that will unambiguously regulate AI broadly. The current proposal (also see some discussion on the EA forum) contains some lines that are related to and could set some precedents for truthfulness-releated topics, such as:
[prohibiting] the placing on the market, putting into service or use of an AI system that deploys subliminal techniques beyond a person’s consciousness in order to materially distort a person’s behaviour in a manner that causes or is likely to cause that person or another person physical or psychological harm
and
Providers shall ensure that AI systems intended to interact with natural persons are designed and developed in such a way that natural persons are informed that they are interacting with an AI system, unless this is obvious from the circumstances and the context of use.
There’s not yet any concrete regulation that I know I’d be excited about pushing (truthfulness-related or otherwise). But I would expect further work to yield decent guesses about what kind of regulation is likely to be better/worse; and I’d be surprised if the answer was to ignore the space or oppose all regulation.
(Although I should note: Even if there will doubtlessly be some regulation of AI in general, that doesn’t mean that there’ll be regulation of all potentially-important subareas of AI. And insofar as there’s currently little attention on regulation of particular sub-areas (including e.g. regulation that mentions alignment, or regulation of narrowly construed AI truthfulness), the situation with regards to pushing for regulation in those areas might be more similar to the general AI/regulation situation from 5 years ago.)
It seemed like a common refrain a few years ago that we didn’t want to involve government in regulating AI because we didn’t know enough about what policy interventions would be counterproductive. Do you think that’s changed? What are the obvious things to look at for regulation?
I don’t think I’m yet at “here’s regulation that I’d just like to see”, but I think it’s really valuable to try to have discussions about what kind of regulation would be good or bad. At some point there will likely be regulation in this space, and it would be great if that was based on as deep an understanding as possible about possible regulatory levers, and their direct and indirect effects, and ultimate desirability.
I do think it’s pretty plausible that regulation about AI and truthfulness could end up being quite positive. But I don’t know enough to identify in exactly what circumstances it should apply, and I think we need a bit more groundwork on building and recognising truthful AI systems first. I guess quite a bit of our paper is trying to open the conversation on that.
Adding to this: AI is already being regulated. In the EU, you could argue that previous regulations (like GDPR) already had some impacts on AI, but regardless, the EU is now working on an AI Act that will unambiguously regulate AI broadly. The current proposal (also see some discussion on the EA forum) contains some lines that are related to and could set some precedents for truthfulness-releated topics, such as:
and
There’s not yet any concrete regulation that I know I’d be excited about pushing (truthfulness-related or otherwise). But I would expect further work to yield decent guesses about what kind of regulation is likely to be better/worse; and I’d be surprised if the answer was to ignore the space or oppose all regulation.
(Although I should note: Even if there will doubtlessly be some regulation of AI in general, that doesn’t mean that there’ll be regulation of all potentially-important subareas of AI. And insofar as there’s currently little attention on regulation of particular sub-areas (including e.g. regulation that mentions alignment, or regulation of narrowly construed AI truthfulness), the situation with regards to pushing for regulation in those areas might be more similar to the general AI/regulation situation from 5 years ago.)