“So we know a strategy that will work. We have actual evidence this is true. Human’s exist and are (generally) aligned with human values. ”
The above is false. Humans aren’t really aligned with human values. Most humans are heavily constrained in their actions. When we see very unconstrained humans (Vladimir Putin, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Xi Jinping, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping) a large proportion are not aligned with human values.
(I’ve stayed with the moderns, but a review of ancient rulers will yield similar results.)
The people you list are all in contexts where they are forced to juggle many forces having different goals, capacity for violence, sizes, etc. Leaders like these gain and keep power by {cajoling, rewarding, punishing, threatening} the military, capitalists, businessmen, revolutionaries, farmers, peasants, bureaucrats, and foreign nations; and by making themselves Basilisks of violence (I think that’s why Hitler and Mussolini loved each other). It’s not obvious to me that these forces *made* e.g. Hitler what he was, but they seem pretty different in nature, and plausibly also in effect, from the incentives of a genius in a vat in a basement with a few genius buddies with a mission to save the world.
Yeah. Why I said “generally.” Obviously if you emulate Stalin bad things will happen. Slightly off topic but I’d say those leader’s weren’t “unconstrained” and revealed something about human nature, but were constrained as any ruler and had to follow the Dictator’s Handbook to stay in power.
It is very unclear that generally humans are unlike Stalin. Maybe! But most humans have far too little power to reveal their preferences-with-lots-of-power. And we seem to have sayings like “power corrupts”, but it’s not at all clear to me whether power corrupts, only the corrupt can gain power, or power simply reveals.
It bears mention that, compared to the median predicted unaligned AGI, I’d hands-down accept Hitler as supreme overlord. It seems probable that humans would still exist under Hitler, and in a fairly recognizable form, even if there were many troubling things about their existence. Furthermore, I suspect that an average human would be better than Hitler, and I’m fairly optimistic that most individuals striving to prevent the AGI apocalypse would make for downright pleasant overseers (or whatever).
“So we know a strategy that will work. We have actual evidence this is true. Human’s exist and are (generally) aligned with human values. ”
The above is false. Humans aren’t really aligned with human values. Most humans are heavily constrained in their actions. When we see very unconstrained humans (Vladimir Putin, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Xi Jinping, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping) a large proportion are not aligned with human values.
(I’ve stayed with the moderns, but a review of ancient rulers will yield similar results.)
The people you list are all in contexts where they are forced to juggle many forces having different goals, capacity for violence, sizes, etc. Leaders like these gain and keep power by {cajoling, rewarding, punishing, threatening} the military, capitalists, businessmen, revolutionaries, farmers, peasants, bureaucrats, and foreign nations; and by making themselves Basilisks of violence (I think that’s why Hitler and Mussolini loved each other). It’s not obvious to me that these forces *made* e.g. Hitler what he was, but they seem pretty different in nature, and plausibly also in effect, from the incentives of a genius in a vat in a basement with a few genius buddies with a mission to save the world.
Yeah. Why I said “generally.” Obviously if you emulate Stalin bad things will happen. Slightly off topic but I’d say those leader’s weren’t “unconstrained” and revealed something about human nature, but were constrained as any ruler and had to follow the Dictator’s Handbook to stay in power.
It is very unclear that generally humans are unlike Stalin. Maybe! But most humans have far too little power to reveal their preferences-with-lots-of-power. And we seem to have sayings like “power corrupts”, but it’s not at all clear to me whether power corrupts, only the corrupt can gain power, or power simply reveals.
It bears mention that, compared to the median predicted unaligned AGI, I’d hands-down accept Hitler as supreme overlord. It seems probable that humans would still exist under Hitler, and in a fairly recognizable form, even if there were many troubling things about their existence. Furthermore, I suspect that an average human would be better than Hitler, and I’m fairly optimistic that most individuals striving to prevent the AGI apocalypse would make for downright pleasant overseers (or whatever).