GlyphMar 1
the AI alignment problem is entirely a smokescreen designed to distract from the capital class alignment problem
Show threadmccMar 1
@glyph I do think there is an interesting perspective where computer software based on deterministic execution of instructions *can* be aligned with the goals of a user but computer software based on a trained statistical model cannot, technically, be aligned with anything at all as there is inherently random behavior. But we can't conceptualize that problem because the capital class is lying and saying that their computer has a soul because they named it "Cylde" and drew googly eyes on it
Show threadmccMar 1
@glyph Even without the "Clyde" problem it's hard to talk about because there's a historical notion of a probabilistic algorithm where you have stochastic behavior operating with proven bounds and a provable distribution of behaviors, and the new type of statistics-based software where the software just sort of does whatever and we don't even discuss it as if it were statistics-based we call it "intelligence"
Show threadGlyphMar 1
@mcc no disagreement with any of that, but the “AI alignment problem” is specified by its advocates in terms of “universal human values”. the stipulated “alignment” is not with specific user desires or a stated optimization objective but with those putative (imagined) values
Show threadMatt BoydMar 1
@glyph @mcc At the far end of this the rationalists going "Logically we need to feed every poor person into a wood chipper so humanity can get to Mars."
Show threadGlyph
@3psboyd @mcc I feel a *little* bad for the lesswrongers generally because this is really judging the community by its worst and most extreme elements, and here we are on fedi (not a group whose most extreme and unpleasant members I would like to represent me) but that faction is certainly … unduly powerful in society right now
Mar 1 at 8:48pmWeb
Show threadJayMar 2
@glyph @3psboyd @mcc
This. I know some decent ones.
But the decent ones tend to follow the Bentham-Utilitarianism-on-acid (aka longtermist) nutters, wherever they lead, IME.
Show threadGlyphMar 2
@jaystephens @3psboyd @mcc if they were at least real Benthamites they’d get out the felicific calculus and do the damn arithmetic and not just slosh around a bunch of half-assed Fermi estimates with orders of magnitude instead of numbers
Show threadGlyphMar 2
@jaystephens @3psboyd @mcc consider this my “born in the dark” Bane speech
Show threadDavid NashMar 2

@glyph @jaystephens @3psboyd @mcc

I know what “felicific calculus” refers to, but every time I see that phrase, I’m annoyed that it refers to generic happiness and not to the number of cats people have (or that they would like to have).

Show threadJayMar 2
@glyph @3psboyd @mcc
Mate, what's a bit of child labour in Africa compared to the happiness of the quadrillions of humans who'll flourish once we're spread across the galaxy? Any malnutrition and lost limbs in the here and now is a rounding error.