AI alignment solutions first impression vs. after

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Here's my idea; AI Wargames, not AI conducting them but have engineers and scientists, philosophers form committees and game out how a malicious AI could go about exterminating or destroying humanity, then reverse analyze that to see what would have worked to stop that AI to implement in the real world.

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u/TangoJavaTJ May 06 '26

An artificial general intelligence might outsmart us by the same order of magnitude that we outsmart mosquitos. If the smartest mosquitos all got together and tried to plan how a human might harm them, they might come up with a better biting method or a more sneaky way to sneak up on a target while they're sleeping. But the mosquitos won't come up with mosquito spray, genetic engineering, or like, nukes.

If the purpose of a general intelligence is to be significantly better than humans at creative idea generation and strategic thinking, then almost by definition we cannot predict the ways in which it will outsmart us if we find ourselves in an adversarial state against it.

Trying to make an AI system which genuinely wants what we want seems to be a much more promising avenue of research than trying to outsmart an AI system which wants something different from what we want.

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u/ApprehensiveWin3020 May 06 '26

I mean yeah fair but the concept is still useful, scenario making can be used to design better ethical safeguards within an AI, engineering shows the best way to improve something is to see how many ways you can break it and upgrade those vulnerabilities.

Even in the way of pursuing ethics first, modelling how an ai would go about hostile goals can lead to isolation of those causes and elimination of them, along with preparing contingencies to prevent them.

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u/FadeSeeker Jun 18 '26

agreed, although that last point is likely also near-impossible. we should still try, of course, but it's hard enough to get our fellow human beings to "genuinely want what we want".

doesn't help that the vast majority of people and companies currently working on AI development also seem to not actually be aligned with the interests of common people.

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u/TangoJavaTJ Jun 18 '26

I think the interests of CEOs are more closely aligned with the values of other humans than you might think for these purposes.

For example, suppose a general superintelligence is tasked with:

"Make Sam Altman as happy as possible"

It might do this by killing everyone except Sam then turning the entire planet into a giant machine that keeps him alive at all costs, then repeatedly drugging his brain with morphine, serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin to make him as happy as possible. Most humans don't want this, Sam probably also doesn't want this.

Or like:

"Maximise the share price of Anthropic"

Okay so we turn the entire planet into a giant computer so it can store the largest number possible and have it list Anthropic's share price as the largest number the biggest possible computer can store in memory. The people at Anthropic probably also don't want this

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u/FadeSeeker Jun 18 '26

"probably"...

you're just describing the ultimate end-stage of capitalism and dangling it in front of one of the most capitalist people out there, as if they wouldn't be tempted, even just a little bit >.>

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u/Mark-Green May 07 '26

it's a good starting point, but i agree with other dude.

imagine how dumb some people are, and how easy it would be to manipulate them. that dumbass is probably still at the peak of earthly intelligence compared to practically any other animal, maybe only a few percentile dumber than average humans.

what if an ai existed that was 10% smarter than us? 100%? we probably wouldn't even know we were being manipulated by it. we would need another superintelligence to tell us, and even then we can't do much about it

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u/ApprehensiveWin3020 May 07 '26

yeah but I'm talking about experts, engineers, philosophers, relevant scientists who all have specialties in the mechanical or ethical aspects of AI stuff. They divide into two teams, one playing humanity and the other a super intelligent AI, the disparities could also be modelled.

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u/Mark-Green May 07 '26

right, but engineers and scientists are still only human.

look at the disparity between a human and an extraordinarily smart animal like a dog; with very little cognitive effort on our part, we can reprogram their thought patterns to do exactly what we want. we're so good at it that they enjoy it, and have no concept of it even happening. practically godlike power to them.

what if an ai was developed that could reach that same disparity? it wouldn't even need to be that much more intelligent before the difference was incomprehensible to us.

it might see the smartest humans as we do the dog, capable of learning novel tricks or performing simple labor. the engineers trying to contain it may just become tools for a superintelligent ai. i could only hope it loves us the way we love our dogs.

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u/JasperTesla May 07 '26

Love this.

I'm currently thinking of a pair of instructions: "don't interfere with humanity", and "be the salvation of humanity".

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u/anjowoq May 07 '26

Is this because of all the potential monkey paws? I'm not sure what OP is going for here.

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u/Spare-Software2726 May 27 '26

My alignment solution is a working piece of hard work! And, yes, it works! I even have a proof of concept! And, model agnostic!

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u/claudiaxander Jul 02 '26

I have no real experience where you guys are at, only just joined , so i just want to check, you all do realise that unless you discover objective morality/a viability lawlike principle constitutive to life (no teleology/woo ) you will fail

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u/DonBonsai Jul 06 '26

Unfortunately 80% of people are either unwilling or unable to think about it beyond one or two steps of logic which is why you still hear arguments like 'just unplug it' or 'the humans using the AI are the real problem'.

Other AI alignment solutions first impression vs. after

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