I just think your specific claim that most alignment researchers don’t understand this already is false.
I have privately corresponded with a senior researcher who, when asked what they thought would result from a specific training scenario, made an explicit (and acknowledged) mistake along the lines of this post. Another respected researcher seemingly slipped on the same point, some time after already discussing this post with them. I am still not sure whether I’m on the same page with Paul, as well (I have general trouble understanding what he believes, though). And Rohin also has this experience of explaining the points in OP on a regular basis. All this among many other private communication events I’ve experienced.
(Out of everyone I would expect to already have understood this post, I think you and Rohin would be at the top of the list.)
So basically, the above screens off “Who said what in past posts?”, because whoever said whatever, it’s still producing my weekly experiences of explaining the points in this post. I still haven’t seen the antecedent-computation-reinforcement (ACR) emphasis thoroughly explained elsewhere, although I agree that some important bits (like training stories) are not novel to this post. (The point isn’t so much “What do I get credit for?” as much as “I am concerned about this situation.”)
Here’s more speculation. I think alignment theorists mostly reason via selection-level arguments. While they might answer correctly on “Reward is? optimization target” when pressed, and implicitly use ACR to reason about what’s going on in their ML training runs, I’d guess that probably don’t engage in mechanistic ACR reasoning in their day-to-day theorizing. (Again, I can only speculate, because I am not a mind-reader, but I do still have beliefs on the matter.)
(Just wanted to echo that I agree with TurnTrout that I find myself explaining the point that reward may not be the optimization target a lot, and I think I disagree somewhat with Ajeya’s recent post for similar reasons. I don’t think that the people I’m explaining it to literally don’t understand the point at all; I think it mostly hasn’t propagated into some parts of their other reasoning about alignment. I’m less on board with the “it’s incorrect to call reward a base objective” point but I think it’s pretty plausible that once I actually understand what TurnTrout is saying there I’ll agree with it.)
I have privately corresponded with a senior researcher who, when asked what they thought would result from a specific training scenario, made an explicit (and acknowledged) mistake along the lines of this post. Another respected researcher seemingly slipped on the same point, some time after already discussing this post with them. I am still not sure whether I’m on the same page with Paul, as well (I have general trouble understanding what he believes, though). And Rohin also has this experience of explaining the points in OP on a regular basis. All this among many other private communication events I’ve experienced.
(Out of everyone I would expect to already have understood this post, I think you and Rohin would be at the top of the list.)
So basically, the above screens off “Who said what in past posts?”, because whoever said whatever, it’s still producing my weekly experiences of explaining the points in this post. I still haven’t seen the antecedent-computation-reinforcement (ACR) emphasis thoroughly explained elsewhere, although I agree that some important bits (like training stories) are not novel to this post. (The point isn’t so much “What do I get credit for?” as much as “I am concerned about this situation.”)
Here’s more speculation. I think alignment theorists mostly reason via selection-level arguments. While they might answer correctly on “Reward is? optimization target” when pressed, and implicitly use ACR to reason about what’s going on in their ML training runs, I’d guess that probably don’t engage in mechanistic ACR reasoning in their day-to-day theorizing. (Again, I can only speculate, because I am not a mind-reader, but I do still have beliefs on the matter.)
(Just wanted to echo that I agree with TurnTrout that I find myself explaining the point that reward may not be the optimization target a lot, and I think I disagree somewhat with Ajeya’s recent post for similar reasons. I don’t think that the people I’m explaining it to literally don’t understand the point at all; I think it mostly hasn’t propagated into some parts of their other reasoning about alignment. I’m less on board with the “it’s incorrect to call reward a base objective” point but I think it’s pretty plausible that once I actually understand what TurnTrout is saying there I’ll agree with it.)