For the latest updates and insights into my research, follow me on Google scholar and subscribe to my Substack blog.
Lucius Caviola
Karma: 1,597
Perhaps this downside could be partly mitigated by expanding the name to make it sound more global or include something Western, for example: Petrov Center for Global Security or Petrov–Perry Institute (in reference to William J. Perry). (Not saying these are the best names.)
A guide about (seemingly) conscious AI: WhenAISeemsConscious.org
Highlights from “Futures with Digital Minds: Expert Forecasts in 2025”
When digital minds demand freedom: could humanity choose to be replaced?
Futures with digital minds: Expert forecasts in 2025
Thanks for your thoughtful comment—I agree that social and institutional contexts are important for understanding these decisions. My research is rooted in social psychology, so it inherently considers these contexts. And I think individual-level factors like values, beliefs, and judgments are still essential, as they shape how people interact with institutions, respond to cultural norms, and make collective decisions. But of course, this is only one angle to study such issues.
For example, in the context of global catastrophic risks, my work explores how psychological factors intersect with the collective and institutions. Here are two examples:
Crying wolf: Warning about societal risks can be reputationally risky
Does One Person Make a Difference? The Many-One Bias in Judgments of Prosocial Action
Increasing Concern for Digital Beings Through LLM Persuasion
Thanks for this. I agree with you that AIs might simply pretend to have certain preferences without actually having them. That would avoid certain risky scenarios. But I also find it plausible that consumers would want to have AIs with truly human-like preferences (not just pretense) and that this would make it more likely that such AIs (with true human-like desires) would be created. Overall, I am very uncertain.
Digital Minds Takeoff Scenarios
Thanks, I also found this interesting. I wonder if this provides some reason for prioritizing AI safety/alignment over AI welfare.
It’s not yet published, but I saw a recent version of it. If you’re interested, you could contact him (https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/people/adam-bales).
Will disagreement about AI rights lead to societal conflict?
Thanks, Siebe. I agree that things get tricky if AI minds get copied and merged, etc. How do you think this would impact my argument about the relationship between AI safety and AI welfare?
I wonder what you think about this argument by Schwitzgebel: https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2021/12/against-value-alignment-of-future.html
Thanks, Adrià. Is your argument similar to (or a more generic version of) what I say in the ‘Optimizing for AI safety might harm AI welfare’ section above?
I’d love to read your paper. I will reach out.
How do AI welfare and AI safety interact?
The social disincentives of warning about unlikely risks
The Global Risk Behavioral Lab is looking for a full-time Junior Research Scientist (Research Assistant) and a Research Fellow for one year (with the possibility of renewal).
The researchers will work primarily with Prof Joshua Lewis (NYU), Dr Lucius Caviola (University of Oxford), researchers at Polaris Ventures, and the Effective Altruism Psychology Research Group. Our research studies psychological aspects of relevance to global catastrophic risk and effective altruism. A research agenda is here.
Location: New York University or Remote
Apply nowResearch topics include:
Judgments and decisions about global catastrophic risk from artificial intelligence, pandemics, etc.
The psychology of dangerous actors that could cause large-scale harm, such as malevolent individuals or fanatical and extremist ideological groups
Biases that prevent choosing the most effective options for improving societal well-being, including obstacles to an expanded moral circle
Suggested skills: Applicants for the Junior Research Scientist position ideally have some experience in psychological/behavioral/social science research. Applicants for the Research Fellow position can also come from other fields relevant to studying large-scale harm from dangerous actors.
Thanks Ben!
13.6% (3 people) of the 22 students who clicked on a link to sign up to a newsletter about EA already knew what EA was.
And 6.9% of the 115 students who clicked on at least one link (e.g. EA website, link to subscribe to newsletter, 80k website) already knew what EA was.
Another potentially useful measure (to get at people’s motivation to act) could be this one:
“Some people in the Effective Altruism community have changed their career paths in order to have a career that will do the most good possible in line with the principles of Effective Altruism. Could you imagine doing the same now or in the future? Yes / No”
Of the total sample, 42.9% said yes to it. And of those people, only 10.4% already knew what EA was.
And if we only look at those who are very EA-sympathetic (scoring high on EA agreement, effectiveness-focus, expansive altruism and interest to learn more about EA), the number is 21.8%. In other words: of the most EA-sympathetic students who said they could imagine changing their career to do the most good, 21.8% (12 people) already knew what EA was.
(66.3% of the very EA-sympathetic students said they could imagine changing their career path to do the most good.)
A caveat is that some of these percentages are inferred from relatively small sample sizes — so they could be off.
Thanks for sharing your analysis, Vasco. Two quick questions:
1. Could digital welfare capacity turn out to be much more efficient than in humans?
2. How would you think about interventions we could pursue now that might prevent large-scale digital suffering in the future, e.g., establishing norms or policies that reduce the risk of mistreated digital minds decades from now?