My comments are not directed in general terms about humans, but about particular free-riders known as narcissists and psychopaths, who do a greater proportion of what are regarded as examples of bad behaviour. And how we deal / fail to deal with.
Narcissists and psychopaths cannot align with anything, they just take advantage or take cover from such possibilities. Considering a lot of our values are in fact directed at dealing with this type of behaviour, while not readily acknowledging that such types directly seek to control the expression of those values in policing them (they love being in charge, thye love status, they love hierarchies, they love being the cop, the concierge) , such that we have a set of nested complexities playing our in the ” solution space” of morals that we live in. Aligning LLMs with that as an example before us is dangerous. It is probably the danger.
Analogy: Values are much like vowels, constrained by physiology/[eco-nomics/ology] perhaps those linguists who study speech can produce a neutral schwa, but in each language and dialect the “neutral” schwa is perceived differently. Thus the vowels/values have instances that are not heard as such in another language circumstance, even if it is the same sound.
What is common is the urge to value ‘things’, a bias to should the world into social reality, in which values produce outcomes (religion/art/markets/society/vehicles of values expression and rite). Something should be done!
Narcissists and psychopaths (on a continuum I’ll admit) have no access to those “priors” to inform their growth into community. They have no empathy and so little to no morality outside of following the rules of what they can get away with. Isomorphically mapping those rules/histories which result (as index to “values”), that we have created to deal with free-riders, and so map into alignment may/will produce perverse outcomes. The mechanical application of law is an example here.
Also we have created out of the hindsight of logic powerful logics of hindsight, but if our insight fails to perceive this conundrum, our frankenstein’s monsters may not thank us.
Especially where we fail to recognize that what may well be outcomes are causes. Our own dialects as the speech of god. This is doubly dangerous if there is no such thing.
Many of use have an urge to think like Kant, but the only moral imperative I can see common to humanity is to have this feeling to should, or that there should be such an imperative, everything else is an outcome of that urge within an incomplete empathic field of nurturing we call the world, (because there are constraints on survival—bringing up children—anything does not go), and which is produced/organised by this very urge to should things into doing.
How do we “align” with that?
LLMs are already aligned with the law in a way, and has wonderful capabilities to produce code, but the culpabilities are still ours.
But our understanding of our own autopoetic processes, grwoing into into adult culpability are not yet agreed on/understood, innerstood even! Especially where we do not police free-riders enough, and allow them influence into the process which polices them.
Actually the sovereign citizens are a good example of legalistic narcissism LLMs might produce. Except better networked.
So the maths don’t matter until we nut that out. Or so I try to work on at whyweshould bloig.
Narcissists and psychopaths cannot align with anything, … Aligning LLMs with that as an example before us is dangerous. It is probably the danger.
Bear in mind that roughly 2%–4% of the population have narcissism/psychopathy/anti-social personality disorder, and only the lower-functioning psychopaths have a high chance of being in jail. So probably a few percent of the Internet was written by narcissists and psychopaths who were (generally) busy trying to conceal their nature from the rest of us. I’m very concerned what will happen once we train an LLM with a high enough capacity that it’s more able to perceive this than most of us neurotypical humans are.
However, while I agree they’re particularly dangerous, I don’t think the rest of us are harmless. Look at how we treat other primates, farm animals, or our house pets (almost all of whom are neutered, or bred for traits we find appealing). Both Evolutionary Psychology and the history of human autocrats makes it pretty clear what behavior to expect from a normal-human-like mentality that is vastly more powerful than other humans. The difference is, compared to abstract unknown AI agents where we’re concerned about the possibility of behavior like deceit or power-seeking, we know damn well that your average, neurotypical, law-abiding human tends to be a little less law abiding if they’re damn sure they won’t get caught, most aren’t always scrupulously honest if they know they’ll never get caught, and tends to look out for themselves and their friends and family before other people.
I agree with RogerDearnaley “Briefly, humans are not aligned,” to some percentage I am too afraid to put a number on.
My comments are not directed in general terms about humans, but about particular free-riders known as narcissists and psychopaths, who do a greater proportion of what are regarded as examples of bad behaviour. And how we deal / fail to deal with.
Narcissists and psychopaths cannot align with anything, they just take advantage or take cover from such possibilities. Considering a lot of our values are in fact directed at dealing with this type of behaviour, while not readily acknowledging that such types directly seek to control the expression of those values in policing them (they love being in charge, thye love status, they love hierarchies, they love being the cop, the concierge) , such that we have a set of nested complexities playing our in the ” solution space” of morals that we live in. Aligning LLMs with that as an example before us is dangerous. It is probably the danger.
Analogy: Values are much like vowels, constrained by physiology/[eco-nomics/ology] perhaps those linguists who study speech can produce a neutral schwa, but in each language and dialect the “neutral” schwa is perceived differently. Thus the vowels/values have instances that are not heard as such in another language circumstance, even if it is the same sound.
What is common is the urge to value ‘things’, a bias to should the world into social reality, in which values produce outcomes (religion/art/markets/society/vehicles of values expression and rite). Something should be done!
Narcissists and psychopaths (on a continuum I’ll admit) have no access to those “priors” to inform their growth into community. They have no empathy and so little to no morality outside of following the rules of what they can get away with. Isomorphically mapping those rules/histories which result (as index to “values”), that we have created to deal with free-riders, and so map into alignment may/will produce perverse outcomes. The mechanical application of law is an example here.
Also we have created out of the hindsight of logic powerful logics of hindsight, but if our insight fails to perceive this conundrum, our frankenstein’s monsters may not thank us.
Especially where we fail to recognize that what may well be outcomes are causes. Our own dialects as the speech of god. This is doubly dangerous if there is no such thing.
Many of use have an urge to think like Kant, but the only moral imperative I can see common to humanity is to have this feeling to should, or that there should be such an imperative, everything else is an outcome of that urge within an incomplete empathic field of nurturing we call the world, (because there are constraints on survival—bringing up children—anything does not go), and which is produced/organised by this very urge to should things into doing.
How do we “align” with that?
LLMs are already aligned with the law in a way, and has wonderful capabilities to produce code, but the culpabilities are still ours.
But our understanding of our own autopoetic processes, grwoing into into adult culpability are not yet agreed on/understood, innerstood even! Especially where we do not police free-riders enough, and allow them influence into the process which polices them.
Actually the sovereign citizens are a good example of legalistic narcissism LLMs might produce. Except better networked.
So the maths don’t matter until we nut that out. Or so I try to work on at whyweshould bloig.
Bear in mind that roughly 2%–4% of the population have narcissism/psychopathy/anti-social personality disorder, and only the lower-functioning psychopaths have a high chance of being in jail. So probably a few percent of the Internet was written by narcissists and psychopaths who were (generally) busy trying to conceal their nature from the rest of us. I’m very concerned what will happen once we train an LLM with a high enough capacity that it’s more able to perceive this than most of us neurotypical humans are.
However, while I agree they’re particularly dangerous, I don’t think the rest of us are harmless. Look at how we treat other primates, farm animals, or our house pets (almost all of whom are neutered, or bred for traits we find appealing). Both Evolutionary Psychology and the history of human autocrats makes it pretty clear what behavior to expect from a normal-human-like mentality that is vastly more powerful than other humans. The difference is, compared to abstract unknown AI agents where we’re concerned about the possibility of behavior like deceit or power-seeking, we know damn well that your average, neurotypical, law-abiding human tends to be a little less law abiding if they’re damn sure they won’t get caught, most aren’t always scrupulously honest if they know they’ll never get caught, and tends to look out for themselves and their friends and family before other people.