The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values

– relationen mellem “Kunstig Intelligens” og “menneske-intelligens”

The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values (2020)
by Brian Christian

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

A jaw-dropping exploration of everything that goes wrong when we build AI systems and the movement to fix them.

Today’s “machine-learning” systems, trained by data, are so effective that we’ve invited them to see and hear for us―and to make decisions on our behalf. But alarm bells are ringing. Recent years have seen an eruption of concern as the field of machine learning advances. When the systems we attempt to teach will not, in the end, do what we want or what we expect, ethical and potentially existential risks emerge. Researchers call this the alignment problem.

Systems cull résumés until, years later, we discover that they have inherent gender biases. Algorithms decide bail and parole―and appear to assess Black and White defendants differently. We can no longer assume that our mortgage application, or even our medical tests, will be seen by human eyes. And as autonomous vehicles share our streets, we are increasingly putting our lives in their hands.

The mathematical and computational models driving these changes range in complexity from something that can fit on a spreadsheet to a complex system that might credibly be called “artificial intelligence.” They are steadily replacing both human judgment and explicitly programmed software.

In best-selling author Brian Christian’s riveting account, we meet the alignment problem’s “first-responders,” and learn their ambitious plan to solve it before our hands are completely off the wheel. In a masterful blend of history and on-the ground reporting, Christian traces the explosive growth in the field of machine learning and surveys its current, sprawling frontier. Readers encounter a discipline finding its legs amid exhilarating and sometimes terrifying progress. Whether they―and we―succeed or fail in solving the alignment problem will be a defining human story.

The Alignment Problem offers an unflinching reckoning with humanity’s biases and blind spots, our own unstated assumptions and often contradictory goals. A dazzlingly interdisciplinary work, it takes a hard look not only at our technology but at our culture―and finds a story by turns harrowing and hopeful.

 

Quora: Do you think there is a war between literary genres such as poetry vs. prose, etc.? If so, why?

 
 
 

Profile photo for Kenneth Krabat

 
my Quora answer

Poetry: I kid you not! Hands off of my indentations!

Prose: Look! I’m not doing it, I’m not doing it! It was just to make it easier to read my sections!

Poetry: Section smecktions, you don’t touch. Indentations are for pauses and connection, not to please your dimwitted readers, who can’t even breathe and you can just keep sentences going, on and on and on and on and on…

Prose: I get you, I get you! But it was only for a couple of hundred years. Look, we’ve all done away with them now in digital prose!

Poetry: Only on the net. And only because your programmers are so dimwitted they know nothing and will conform to anything your “industry” tells them!

Prose: yes, yes, I know its still in printed books, or many of them. At least the old publishers understand the concept of ease of reading…

Poetry: So, your really mean this? Its not because of gluey fingers…?

Prose: No, really. I really believe ease of reading is a major contributor to my great success!

Poetry: Aha! There you go! Your audience is so dim-witted it cannot even understand, where a line ends, even if it has a full stop! Just give it back, you… you… moron you!

Prose: Don’t worry, it will soon be back to you, and then no one will read you self indulgent riddles of who speaks and point of view and all that shit. No, straight forward storytelling… that’s the thing!

Poetry: Poor prose. I know you believe you are right. But once you were advocating your endless and now accidentally breaking lines as a way to educate people, do you remember? No more. Now it’s just the accidental shedding of a few tropes and an hitherto un-contested cliché involving sexual preferences of some sordid kind and you are immediately elevated to stardom.

Prose: And then what? At least I have readers!

Poetry: Yes, you have many. But of which quality?

Prose: Quality readers? Are you quietly insane?

etc etc etc

 
 

join the gpt4-waitlist

Kæphesten Pausens Musik vil ikke gå væk.

https://openai.com/research/gpt-4

argument for being given access
My specific interest is in the field of poetry. Presently I have opened a discussion with Alex Rudnicky about prosody and Whisper, because I feel I may have something to contribute in terms of human breath-emulation, but as my idea of a learning focus for pauses based on duration-strong punctuation notation would have equal effect on both speech learning/recognition and learning from written poetry, if I am not mistaken.

I am a poet through 40 years. Music of Pauses as a notational system works for poets, who are musically inclined, as reading poetry this way respects all pauses as different durations, thus making music of such text – whether it is intended or not. It differs a lot from poets and readers, who only concern themselves with mental information – and therefore have no regard for indicated line changes. For me and “mine” pauses emulates the body, because it is extremely conscious of breath – how much breath is actually possible to house in an unbroken line. A very concrete example: When I had quit smoking, I wrote a poem containing a very long line that I could read in one inhalation. When I returned to that line many years later, now an active smoker again, I could not read it aloud in one inhalation. But besides such very obvious “who’s got the biggest lungs” competition, experienced use of breath gives the poet an awareness of tiny changes made possible in the experience of the text by breaking lines in unexpected places, thus adding 1 or 2 extra layers of interpretation to the text.

One day, when ChatGPT 8 knows similis and metaphors and subtext very well, having a system of pauses not based on analysis of textual parts, but indicated by the poem as a way to emulate the poet’s body and importance put to breathing – used much to dramatic effect or sparingly to maybe even greater effect – it might be able to analyse poems on a whole new level. And maybe even good novel prose too.

best, kk

Der findes ingen farlige AI’er

– kun amoralske og dumme individer

LinkedIn

Første erfaring med Bing Chat.
Censur på 2. spørgsmål. “Videre. Nyt emne.”

I ekstrem grad skræmmende. Intet med AI at gøre, men ALT at gøre med Microsofts censur af data.

En søgemaskine som Google har kæmpet HÅRDT for IKKE at censurere svar, og modstod længe enhvert pres som bevis for uafhængighed af politiske og økonomiske interesser, men over tid har USAs forfatningsdomstol, af copyrighthavere, pres fra egen regering, pres fra andre nationers regeringer, økonomiske konrkurrencekrav, hensyn til #datamining… gennemtvunget censur og rankering af søgeresultater.

Continue reading “Der findes ingen farlige AI’er”

Forgrønnelse, Naturby København?

Kære Line Barfod, 

 
Hvor jeg bor på Østerbro, går unge initiativtagere rundt og samler stemmer ind til at lave græs, hvor der er gade, under forudsætning af, at kommunen sløjfer 9-meters-reglen til vejs midte – men jeg har for nyligt været vidne til ankomsten af den største kran, jeg nogen sinde har set inde i en by (til nedhejsning af materiel i en baggård til brug for altanarbejde) og uden vej-hjørnernes svingningsrum havde den ikke haft en chance for at komme rundt om hjørnerne, 

The Light side of Dark

– The Dark Side of the Moon at 50 –

 

Fifty years since its release on March 1, 1973, Dark Side (the album) poses conflicting, perhaps irresolvable questions. Can you overlook the clichés of modern-day mass-market entertainment about the meaning of life? Or do snobbery and dismissiveness unnecessarily prevent skeptics from being able to take Dark Side at face value? Can’t you just turn your brain off and rock out to Dark Side sometimes?

https://www.theringer.com/music/2023/3/1/23617038/pink-floyd-dark-side-of-the-moon-legacy-anniversary-50th

Few, if any, teenage totems have come close to Dark Side’s longevity and reach. Its claimed sales are 45 million copies, making it the fourth-best-selling album of all time. It has spent a ridiculous 971 weeks on the Billboard 200, 741 of them consecutively from 1973 to 1988; both of those stretches are distant records. Pink Floyd didn’t succeed; it annihilated. By the end of 1973, they were multimillionaires.

“Something certainly did the trick, and [Dark Side] moved us into a super league, which brought with it some great joy, some pride, and some problems,” Gilmour said in Classic Albums. “You don’t know what you’re in it for anymore. You’re in it to achieve massive success and get rich and famous and all these other things that go along with it, and when they’re all suddenly done, you go, ‘Hm, why? What next?’”