Thank you for the detailed response. Some responses to your points:
Our values might get locked in this century through technology or totalitarian politics, in which case we need to rush to reach something tolerable as quickly as possible;
I’m having a hard time thinking of how technology could lock in our values. One possibility is that AGI would be programmed to value what we currently value with no ability to have moral growth. However, it’s not clear to me why anyone would do this. People, as best as I can tell, value moral growth and thus would want AGI to be able to exhibit it.
There is the possibility that programming AGI to value only what we currently value right now without the possibility of moral growth would be technically easier. I don’t see why this would be the case, though. Implementing people’s CEV, as Eliezer proposed, would allow for moral growth. Narrow value learning, as Paul Christiano proposed, would presumably allow for moral growth if the AGI learns to avoid changing people’s goals. AGI alignment via direct specification may be made easier by prohibiting moral growth, but the general consensus I’ve seen is that alignment via direct specification would be extremely difficult and thus improbable.
There’s the possibility of people creating technology for the express purpose of preventing moral growth, but I don’t know why people would do that.
As for totalitarian politics, it’s not clear to me how they would stop moral growth. If there is anyone in charge, I would imagine they would value their personal moral growth and thus would be able to realize that animal rights are important. After that, I imagine the leader would then be able to spread their values onto others. I know little about politics, though, so there may be something huge I’m missing.
I’m also a little concerned that campaigning for animals rights may backfire. Currently many people seem unaware of just how bad animal suffering is. Many people also love eating meat. If people become informed of the extent of animal suffering, then to minimize cognitive dissonance I’m concerned people will stop caring about animals rather than stop eating meat.
So, my understanding is, getting a significant proportion of people to stop eating meat might make them more likely to exhibit moral growth by caring about other animals, which would be useful for one, unlikely to be used, alignment strategy. I’m not saying this is the entirety of your reasoning, but I suspect it would be much more efficient working on AI alignment by directly working on alignment research or by convincing people that such alignment research is important.
Another possibility is to attempt to spread humane values by directly teaching moral philosophy. Does this sound feasible?
Our values might end up on a bad but self-reinforcing track from which we can’t escape, which is a reason to get to something tolerable quickly, in order to make that less likely;
Do you have any situations in mind in which this could occur?
Fixing the problem of discrimination against animals allows us to progress to other moral circle expansions sooner, most notably from a long-termist perspective, recognising the risks of suffering in thinking machines;
I’m wondering what your reasoning behind this is.
Animal advocacy can draw people into relevant moral philosophy, effective altruism and related work on other problems, which arguably increases the value of the long-term future.
I’m concerned this may backfire as well. Perhaps people would after becoming vegan, figure they have done a sufficiently large amount of good and thus be less likely to pursue other forms of altruism.
This might seem unreasonable: performing one good deed does not seem to increase the costs or decrease the benefits of performing other good deeds by much. However, it does seem to be how people act. As evidence, I heard that despite wealth having steeply diminishing returns to happiness, wealthy individuals give a smaller proportion of their money to charities. Further, some EA’s have a policy of donating 10% of their income, even if after donating 10% they still have far more money than necessary for living comfortably.
I think that in the future, people will eliminate acquiring food by suffering animals in factory farms anyways. This is because people will presumably be able to live in virtual realities and efficiently create virtual food without causing any suffering. Thoughts?