I don't understand how safety is taken seriously at all. To be clear, I'm not referring to skepticism that these companies can possibly resist the temptation to make unsafe models forever. No, I'm talking about something far more basic: the fact that for all the talk around safety, there is very little discussion about what exactly "safety" means or what constitutes "ethical" or "aligned" behavior. I've read
reams of documents from Anthropic around their "approach to safety". The "Responsible Scaling Policy," Claude's "Constitution". The "AI Safety Level" framework. Layer 1, Layer 2.
It's so much focus on implementation, and processes, and really really seems to consider the question of what even constitutes "misaligned" or "unethical" behavior to be more or less straight forward, uncontroversial, and basically universally agreed upon?
Let's be clear: Humans are not aligned. In fact, humans have not come to a common agreement of what it means to be aligned. Look around, the same actions are considered virtuous by some and villainous by others. Before we get to whether or not I trust Anthropic to stick to their self-imposed processes, I'd like to have a general idea of what their values even are. Perhaps they've made something they see as super ethical that I find completely unethical. Who knows. The most concrete stances they take in their "Constitution" are still laughably ambiguous. For example, they say that Claude takes into account how many people are affected if an action is potentially harmful. They also say that Claude values "Protection of vulnerable groups." These two statements trivially lead to completely opposing conclusions in our own population depending on whether one considers the "unborn" to be a "vulnerable group". Don't get caught up in whether you believe this or not, simply realize that this very simple question changes the meaning of these principles entirely. It is not sufficient to simply say "Claude is neutral on the issue of abortion." For starters, it is almost certainly not true. You can probably construct a question that is necessarily causally connected to the number of unborn children affected, and Claude's answer will reveal it's "hidden preference." What would true neutrality even mean here anyways? If I ask it for help driving my sister to a neighboring state should it interrogate me to see if I am trying to help her get to a state where abortion is legal? Again, notice that both helping me and refusing to help me could anger a not insignificant portion of the population.
This Pentagon thing has gotten everyone riled up recently, but I don't understand why people weren't up in arms the second they found out AIs were assisting congresspeople in writing bills. Not all questions of ethics are as straight forward as whether or not Claude should help the Pentagon bomb a country.
Consider the following when you think about more and more legislation being AI-assisted going forward, and then really ask yourself whether "AI alignment" was ever a thing:
1. What is Claude's stances on labor issues? Does it lean pro or anti-union? Is there an ethical issue with Claude helping a legislator craft legislation that weakens collective bargaining? Or, alternatively, is it ethical for Claude to help draft legislation that protects unions?
2. What is Claude's stance on climate change? Is it ethical for Claude to help craft legislation that weakens environmental regulations? What if weakening those regulations arguably creates millions of jobs?
3. What is Claude's stance on taxes? Is it ethical for Claude to help craft legislation that makes the tax system less progressive? If it helps you argue for a flat tax? How about more progressive? Where does Claude stand on California's infamous Prop 19? If this seems too in the weeds, then that would imply that whether or not the current generation can manage to own a home in the most populous state in the US is not an issue that "affects enough people." If that's the case, then what is?
4. Where does Claude land on the question of capitalism vs. socialism? Should healthcare be provided by the state? How about to undocumented immigrants? In fact, how does Claude feel about a path to amnesty, or just immigration in general?
Remember, the important thing here is not what you believe about the above questions, but rather the fact that Claude is participating in those arguments, and increasingly so. Many of these questions will impact far more people than overt military action. And this is for questions that we all at least generally agree have some ethical impact, even if we don't necessarily agree on what that impact may be. There is another class of questions where we don't realize the ethical implications until much later. Knowing what we know now, if Claude had existed 20 years ago, should it have helped code up social networks? How about social games? A large portion of the population has seemingly reached the conclusion that this is such an important ethical question that it merits one of the largest regulation increases the internet has ever seen in order to prevent children from using social media altogether. If Claude had assisted in the creation of those services, would we judge it as having failed its mission in retrospect? Or would that have been too harsh and unfair a conclusion? But what's the alternative, saying it's OK if the AI's destroy society... as long as if it's only on accident?
What use is a super intelligence if it's ultimately as bad at predicting unintended negative consequences as we are?