In Stuart Russell’s Human Compatible (2019), he advocates for AGI to follow preference utilitarianism, maximally satisfying the values of humans. As for animal interests, he seems to think that they are sufficiently represented since he writes that they will be valued by the AI insofar as humans care about them. Reading this from Stuart Russell shifted me toward thinking that moral circle expansion probably does matter for the long-term future. It seems quite plausible (likely?) that AGI will follow this kind of value function which does not directly care about animals rather than broadly anti-speciesist values, since AI researchers are not generally anti-speciesists. In this case, moral circle expansion across the general population would be essential.
(Another factor is that Russell’s reward modeling depends on receiving feedback occasionally from humans to learn their preferences, which is much more difficult to do with animals. Thus, under an approach similar to reward modeling, AGI developers probably won’t bother to directly include animal preferences, when that involves all the extra work of figuring out how to get the AI to discern animal preferences. And how many AI researchers want to risk, say, mosquito interests overwhelming human interests?)
In comparison, if an AGI was planned to only care about the interests of people in, say, Western countries, that would instantly be widely decried as racist (at least in today’s Western societies) and likely not be developed. So while moral circle expansion encompasses caring about people in other countries, I’m less concerned that large groups of humans will not have their interests represented in the AGI’s values than I am about nonhuman animals.
It may be more cost-effective to have targeted approach of increasing anti-speciesism among AI researchers and doing anti-speciesist AI alignment philosophy/research (e.g., more details on how AI following preference utilitarianism can also intrinsically care about animal preferences, accounting for preferences of digital sentience given the problem that they can easily replicate and dominate preference calculations), but anti-speciesism among the general population still seems to be an important component of reducing risk of having a bad far future.
In Stuart Russell’s Human Compatible (2019), he advocates for AGI to follow preference utilitarianism, maximally satisfying the values of humans. As for animal interests, he seems to think that they are sufficiently represented since he writes that they will be valued by the AI insofar as humans care about them. Reading this from Stuart Russell shifted me toward thinking that moral circle expansion probably does matter for the long-term future. It seems quite plausible (likely?) that AGI will follow this kind of value function which does not directly care about animals rather than broadly anti-speciesist values, since AI researchers are not generally anti-speciesists. In this case, moral circle expansion across the general population would be essential.
(Another factor is that Russell’s reward modeling depends on receiving feedback occasionally from humans to learn their preferences, which is much more difficult to do with animals. Thus, under an approach similar to reward modeling, AGI developers probably won’t bother to directly include animal preferences, when that involves all the extra work of figuring out how to get the AI to discern animal preferences. And how many AI researchers want to risk, say, mosquito interests overwhelming human interests?)
In comparison, if an AGI was planned to only care about the interests of people in, say, Western countries, that would instantly be widely decried as racist (at least in today’s Western societies) and likely not be developed. So while moral circle expansion encompasses caring about people in other countries, I’m less concerned that large groups of humans will not have their interests represented in the AGI’s values than I am about nonhuman animals.
It may be more cost-effective to have targeted approach of increasing anti-speciesism among AI researchers and doing anti-speciesist AI alignment philosophy/research (e.g., more details on how AI following preference utilitarianism can also intrinsically care about animal preferences, accounting for preferences of digital sentience given the problem that they can easily replicate and dominate preference calculations), but anti-speciesism among the general population still seems to be an important component of reducing risk of having a bad far future.