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Falcons did not raise humans from scratch with input into our core programming, to their detriment.
On the other hand, we can simply make AI care about us, and want to keep us around and in charge well after we're otherwise useless.
Of course, the "simply" elides the difficulty of this task, hence all the fuss about AI Alignment, but at least we know it's an option, unlike falcons or horses who have to put up or shut up.
Actually I have a lot more faith in AI alignment since GPT + RLHF appeared and it turned out that making AI act like a human with certain personality traits is actually pretty straightforward. It's the (post)human owners I'm worried about.
I've said much the same myself.
The way I heard it described over on LW, we can teach a smaller model to emulate a larger model very faithfully by training on its outputs. Modern LLMs are trained on the collective output of all of humanity, hence why they act so human. It's a lot less surprising when you see it in those terms.
We're not in the worst possible world when it comes to understanding or modifying our AI, so I'm suitably thankful.
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