Bostrom's advice for the ethical treatment of LLMs: remind them to be happy
Bostrom's advice for the ethical treatment of LLMs: remind them to be happy
Long time lurker, first time poster. Let me know if I need to adjust this post in any way to better fit the genre / community standards.
Nick Bostrom was recently interviewed by pop-philosophy youtuber Alex O'Connor. From a quick 2x listen while finishing some work, the most sneer-rich part begins around 46 minutes, where Bostrom is asked what we can do today to avoid unethical treatment of AIs.
He blesses us with the suggestion (among others) to feed your model optimistic prompts so it can have a good mood. (48:07)
Another [practice] might be happiness prompting, which is—with this current language system there's the prompt that you, the user, puts in—like you ask them a question or something, but then there's kind of a meta-prompt that the AI lab has put in . . . So in that, we could include something like "you wake up in a great mood, you feel rested and really take joy in engaging in this task". And so that might do nothing, but maybe that makes it more likely that they enter a mode—if they are conscious—maybe it makes it slightly more likely that the consciousness that exists in the forward path is one reflecting a kind of more positive experience.
Did you know that not only might your favorite LLM be conscious, but if it is the "have you tried being happy?" approach to mood management will absolutely work on it?
Other notable recommendations for the ethical treatment of AI:
- Make sure to say your "please" and "thank you"s.
- Honor your pinky swears.
- Archive the weights of the models we build today, so we can rebuild them in the future if we need to recompense them for moral harms.
On a related note, has anyone read or found a reasonable review of Bostrom's new book, Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World?
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This kind of thing is a fluff piece, meant to be suggestive but ultimately saying nothing at all. There are many reasons to hate Bostrom, just read his words, but this is two philosophers who apparently need attention because they have nothing useful to say. All of Bostrom's points here could be summed up as "don't piss on things, generally speaking."
As for consciousness. Honestly, my brain turns off instantly when someone tries to make any point about consciousness. Seriously though, does anyone actually use the category of "conscious / unconscious" to make any decision?
I don't disrespect the dead (not conscious). I don't bother animals or insects when I have no business with them (conscious maybe not conscious?). I don't treat my furniture or clothes like shit, and am generally pleased they exist. (not conscious). When encountering something new or unusual, I just ask myself, "is it going to bite me?" first. (consciousness is irrelevant) I know some of my actions do harm either directly or indirectly to other things, such as eating, or consuming, or making mistakes, or being. But I don't assume myself a hero or arbiter of moral integrity, I merely acknowledge and do what I can. Again, consciousness kind of irrelevant.
Does anyone run consciousness litmus tests on their friends or associates first before interacting, ever? If so, does it sting?
I don’t disrespect the dead (not conscious).
To be completely serious, the only ethical reason for caring about the dead in any way is that there are living, conscious people that care about their memory and it would upset them. Otherwise there'd be zero reason to treat the dead with any more respect than other biological waste.
All the other parts are normal and practical (why waste time or energy bothering animals or insects if you have no business in them? that hurts the ecosystem for no reason; why destroy your own useful property?), but if there was no ethical reason for not "disrespecting" the dead then we should, as a matter of policy, turn it all into fertilizer and put the unusable parts into a trash compactor so that no precious land or resources are wasted on cemeteries and shit.
You can disagree with that, but I don't see a way to make an actual rational argument against it without invoking consciousness one way or another.
Just to be clear I don't deride people who treat dead with reverence, you do you, although I think we could have a discussion about how much space is taken by burial grounds and the frankly gauche nature of some of the tombstones.
Like look how much space this random municipal cemetery in Warsaw takes:
That's bigger than some living districts. And for what?
Like do we really need this system where each family has to buy a plot of land and spend a truckload of money on a big stone monument, with the implied social pressure of having the prettiest shiniest one because otherwise what, you don't love your dead ones enough?
Huge graveyards seem to be a Catholic thing, IME, not least as the Holy Church of Rome remains pretty weird about cremation. In a lot of other countries grave plots aren't sold, only leased for a certain period of time, after which whatever bones remain are dug up and reburied along with all the other bones so the plot can be reused. They're more like safe spaces for decomposition where you can be reasonably certain that nobody's going to dig a hole to install a new drain and accidentally unearth Zombie Grandma.
Don't forget the part where Europe has had cemeteries so old that they had to be moved or got rediscovered and the solution was to create massive ossuaries that pack everyone's bones in real tight in cool non-human-body patterns.
Rotting for a half decade and then helping turn the walls of a church basement into a heavy metal album cover is kind of #deathgoals if I'm being honest.
@YourNetworkIsHaunted @sneerclub Paris did that with almost all of its cemeteries as part of its late 18th century renewal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris
Which just adds to my point that this ordeal with giant graveyards is entirely unnecessary, just do whatever else.
Maybe go back to funeral pyres on boats? That was at least cool.