Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

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The problem with AI alignment is that humans aren't aligned (lemy.lol)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm sure there are some AI peeps here. Neural networks scale with size because the number of combinations of parameter values that work for a given task scales exponentially (or, even better, factorially if that's a word???) with the network size. How can such a network be properly aligned when even humans, the most advanced natural neural nets, are not aligned? What can we realistically hope for?

Here's what I mean by alignment:

Ability to specify a loss function that humanity wants
Some strict or statistical guarantees on the deviation from that loss function as well as potentially unaccounted side effects

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

Good counterpoint. I was more inferring not possible for us to figure out rather than impossible. We may simply be running out of time more than anything. Maybe that's why the top people are so eager to push into unknowns (aside from the profitability of course). They see we have a small window of high tech opportunity and being too cautious and slow we'll miss it. Naturally a big assumption is that AGI will be aligned and able to help us fix things, rather than the often portrayed versions that decide we are the problem, or that the problems are too insurmountable and the AI turns itself off.