Insofar as alignment continues to promote overlapping sets of characteristics (e.g. helpful, harmless, honest, corrigible), should compassion be one of those characteristics?
Upon reflection probably not, since: Compassion seems a bit ill defined and can be interpreted in vastly more or less paternalistic ways. I’d certainly prefer instilling a care for human’s current preferences over a vague notion of compassion that might be interpreted in undesirable ways. Since I really think we should avoid any scenario where the AI might ignore our current preferences because of some abstract ideals or a decision that it paternalistically decided we’d be better off in the long run if it violated our current preferences. Especially since it seems for a mature superintelligence trivially easy to modify people in such a way that after modification their desire to be the way that they are is vastly stronger than their prior desire not to have their mind tampered with.
Upon reflection probably not, since: Compassion seems a bit ill defined and can be interpreted in vastly more or less paternalistic ways. I’d certainly prefer instilling a care for human’s current preferences over a vague notion of compassion that might be interpreted in undesirable ways. Since I really think we should avoid any scenario where the AI might ignore our current preferences because of some abstract ideals or a decision that it paternalistically decided we’d be better off in the long run if it violated our current preferences. Especially since it seems for a mature superintelligence trivially easy to modify people in such a way that after modification their desire to be the way that they are is vastly stronger than their prior desire not to have their mind tampered with.