How Do We Align Artificial Intelligence with Human Values? - Future of Life Institute

A major change is coming, over unknown timescales but across every segment of society, and the people playing a part in that transition have a huge responsibility and opportunity to shape it for the best. What will trigger this change? Recently, some of the top minds in AI and related fields got together to discuss how we can ensure AI remains beneficial throughout this transition, and the result was the Asilomar AI Principles document. The intent of these 23 principles is to offer a framework to help artificial intelligence benefit as many people as possible. But, as AI expert Toby Walsh said of the Principles, "Of course, it's just a start. The Principles represent the beginning of a conversation, and now that the conversation is underway, we need to follow up with broad discussion about each individual principle. The Principles will mean different things to different people, and in order to benefit as much of society as possible, we need to think about each principle individually. As part of this effort, I interviewed many of the AI researchers who signed the Principles document to learn their take on why they signed and what issues still confront us. Today, we start with the Value Alignment principle. Value Alignment: Highly autonomous AI systems should be designed so that their goals and behaviors can be assured to align with human values throughout their operation. Stuart Russell, who helped pioneer the idea of value alignment, likes to compare this to the King Midas story. When King Midas asked for everything he touched to turn to gold, he really just wanted to be rich. He didn't actually want his food and loved ones to turn to gold. We face a similar situation with artificial intelligence: how do we ensure that an AI will do what we really want, while not harming humans in a misguided attempt to do what its designer requested? "Robots aren't going to try to revolt against humanity," explains Anca Dragan, an assistant professor and colleague of Russell's at UC Berkeley, "they'll just try to optimize whatever we tell them to do.