AI Risk #4 - The Control Problem

The control problem. Can one control a superintelligence? Alternately, can one design it with some basic guiding principles as input to prevent bad outcomes?

 

The answer to both options is almost certainly No, writes Nick Bostrom in Superintelligence. Controlling a more intelligent entity? How likely is that?

“(An) AI would realize it is under surveillance and adjust its thinking accordingly.”

How about boxing an AI to a very limited and controlled environment? Won’t work – as I wrote in an earlier blog, ChatGPT has already shown that it can outsmart, trick or manipulate humans to get access to what it wants. In future, that might mean an Internet connection, more resources, whatever.

 

Feed it some core “good guy” principles? Anyone who has raised a kid can tell you it is impossible to frame such rules – every rule has an exception; every rule is open to misinterpretation, both innocently and maliciously; every rule has loopholes.

 

In any case, says Bostrom, almost philosophically:

“We might be wrong about morality; wrong also about what is good for us; wrong even about what we truly want.”

 

I guess Bostrom isn’t optimistic of any control system that could work, which is why one of his chapters is titled “Is the default option Doom?”.

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