Funding the AI alignment institute, a Manhattan project scale for AI alignment.
Artificial intelligence
Aligning AI with human interests could be very hard. The current growth in AI alignment research might be insufficient to align AI. To speed up alignment research, we want to fund an ambitious institute attracting hundreds to thousands of researchers and engineers to work full-time on aligning AI. The institute would enable these researchers to work with computing resources competitive with top AI industries. We could also slow down risky AI capability research by offering top AI capability researchers competitive wages and autonomy, draining them from top AI organizations. While small specialized teams would pursue innovative alignment research, the institute would enhance their collaboration, bridging AI alignment theory, experiment, and policy. The institute could also offer alignment fellowships optimized to speed up the onboarding of bright young students in alignment research. For example, we would fund stipends and mentorships competitive with doctoral programs or entry-level jobs in the industry. The institute would be located in a place safe from global catastrophic risks and facilitate access to high-quality healthcare, food, housing, transportation to optimize researchers well being and productivity.
Regulating AI consciousness.
Artificial intelligence, Values and reflective process
The probability that AIs will be capable of conscious processing in the incoming decades is not negligible. With the right information dynamics, some artificial cognitive architecture could support conscious experiences. The global neural workspace is an example of a leading theory of consciousness compatible with this view. Furthermore, if it turns out that conscious processing improves learning efficiency then building AI capable of consciousness might become an effective path toward more generally capable AI. Building conscious AIs would have crucial ethical implications given their high expected population. To decrease the chance of bad moral outcomes we could follow two broad strategies. First, we could fund policy projects aiming to work with regulators to ban or slow down research that poses a substantial risk to building conscious AI. Regulations slowing the arrival of conscious AIs could be in place until we gain more moral clarity and a solid understanding of machine consciousness. For example, philosopher Thomas Metzinger advocated a moratorium on synthetic phenomenology in a previously published paper. Second, we need to fund more research in machine consciousness and philosophy of mind improving our understanding of synthetic phenomenology in AIs and their moral status. Note that machine consciousness is currently very neglected as an academic field.