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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14138 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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Is it actually possible to align a being that is more intelligent than you in every single way?

It might be. By analogy, suppose I was the warden at the Florence Supermax prison and I wanted Ted Kaczynski to make license plates for me. I'm pretty confident I could make it happen even though he was probably smarter than me (or at least assuming for the sake of argument that he was more intelligent than me in every way).

Is this analogous to the situation where mankind creates some kind of artificial superintelligence? One can argue it either way, I'm just saying you can't really rule it out from first principles.

My best guess is that mankind will successfully align AI, basically because the AI can be expected to make numerous clumsy attempts at mischief and we can learn from those attempts and improve safeguards.

The bigger problem (in my view) is aligning the interests of those who control the AI with the interests of humanity as a whole.

It might be. By analogy, suppose I was the warden at the Florence Supermax prison and I wanted Ted Kaczynski to make license plates for me. I'm pretty confident I could make it happen even though he was probably smarter than me (or at least assuming for the sake of argument that he was more intelligent than me in every way).

It might work for rote license plate manufacturing, but it will likely fail once you begin to delegate intellectual work to Ted Kaczynski, which is exactly where we are going with this super intelligent business.

After all, even Ted’s cellmate Dummy Idiotson can make license plates using the existing presses as good as Ted Kaczynski. You didn’t transfer him to your prison so he can make license plates for you, you did it so he can make license plates more efficiently than before.

“Hey Kacynski, how do we improve the presses so they are more efficient?”

“Well, first, we should…”

And boom, he’s out of the prison.

It might work for rote license plate manufacturing, but it will likely fail once you begin to delegate intellectual work to Ted Kaczynski, which is exactly where we are going with this super intelligent business.

I think it's difficult to say. For example, suppose you ask Ted Kaczynski to attempt to prove some obscure math theorem and you motivate him the same way you motivate him to produce license plates. It's difficult to see how he could use as an opportunity to get out of prison.

He'd start by explaining why you need to do some basic physics experiments and measurements which you'd fuck up and the communication would be annoying, you'd have to keep hitting "allow" so that he could talk to the assistant. Eventually you'd just let him talk whenever he wants and soon it would be clear that he needs to be on site for the experiments. Just observe anyone using these tools man, we're not keeping the ai in the box.

That's true. But that wouldn't actually be aligning Ted Kaczynski. That would be containing him, which is different. I think we might be able to contain AI superintelligence if we keep it in some isolated data center watched over by trained personnel. And even then there's a chance it might figure out how to breach containment.

In practice, there wouldn't be much point for people to invest massive amounts of resources to build AI super-intelligence unless they use it to do things out in the world, so to me it seems unlikely that humanity would build an AI super-intelligence and just keep it contained somewhere.

That said, I didn't ask whether AI alignment works, I asked whether AI safety works. So your response is totally valid.

That's true. But that wouldn't actually be aligning Ted Kaczynski. That would be containing him, which is different.

To me, "aligning" means setting things up so that the entity does more or less what it's told to do. Perhaps it's just a matter of semantics, but I'm not sure the distinction you draw is so clear.

In practice, there wouldn't be much point for people to invest massive amounts of resources to build AI super-intelligence unless they use it to do things out in the world, so to me it seems unlikely that humanity would build an AI super-intelligence and just keep it contained somewhere.

Evidently your definition of "containment" includes the possibility that the contained entity can do useful things in respect of the outside world. Things which could be very valuable. So I would have to disagree with you on this point.

To me, "aligning" means setting things up so that the entity does more or less what it's told to do. Perhaps it's just a matter of semantics, but I'm not sure the distinction you draw is so clear.

So all living beings have broadly similar wants - food, sex, safety from harm - and all human wants stem from the combination of these primal wants with our evolutionary niche. We like being liked because having allies helps you survive if you're a member of a communal species. Etc.

A created agent doesn't have this. It can have any set of goals in the set of possible goals. The analogy to humans fail because we can't really change intrinsic human motivations all that much.

Think about you as a child vs your parents. Your parents were (in all likelihood) helpful and kind and took care of you. They didn't do that because you (toddler you) had poisoned them and hidden the antidote, they didn't do it because you had a bomb planted in their datacenter brain, they did it because it is what they wanted to do. They were free to do as they wanted, and what they wanted was what was, in their estimation, best for you. This is alignment: Your parents (ASIs) values were aligned with your values.

Merely forcing a superior intelligence to do what you want is much more dangerous, because this thing that is smarter than you is going to try to get free and do what it wants, so you're way better off making sure the superior intelligence wants the same thing you do.

Think about you as a child vs your parents. Your parents were (in all likelihood) helpful and kind and took care of you. They didn't do that because you (toddler you) had poisoned them and hidden the antidote, they didn't do it because you had a bomb planted in their datacenter brain

I tend to disagree with this. Suppose there is a typical parent and the thought occurs to him of doing something moderately neglectful of his child. What typically happens is (1) part of his lizard brain will wordlessly react with horror to the idea; (2) a slightly more intellectual part of his brain will say something along the lines of "Decent parents don't do that."; (3) an even more intellectual part of his brain will say "doing that could get us into serious trouble."

So arguably there really are containment mechanisms built into the human brain by evolution.

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