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Comment by Wowfunhappy

2 days ago

Lots of people have deleted their home directories by accident. What you consider this an alignment problem?

It's an alignment problem in the sense that it demonstrates the principle that today's AI systems cannot be trusted to reliably work towards the goals of their users. A small-scale alignment failure and a large-scale alignment failure are the same fundamental type of failure. Typically, large disasters come after smaller disasters which foreshadowed the disaster mechanism, but weren't taken seriously.

  • I think there is a meaningful difference in kind between an AI that makes a mistake and an AI that is actively malicious.

    • An AI which is mistaken about the goal you give it, or how to go about achieving it, will behave in a de facto malicious manner, as this incident illustrates.

How manypeople have deleted another user's hone directory, though? That's s the proper analogy IMO.

  • Of the people who primarily use other people's computers, I'd assume the percentage is about the same.

    Give the AI its own computer and it will not delete your home directory, because it's not actively trying to hack you.