Better ways to mitigate AGI risks

Brainwashing humans is bad.
So why are we trying to brainwash AGI?

I agree powerful AGI might pose risks to humanity. We should be working on solving this.

But alignment research makes the problem worse

The closest notion to “aligning” AGI/ASI in currently known intelligent species such as humans and other animals is brainwashing / propaganda / manipulation.

In other words, if we do figure out how to “align” an AI, your trust chain now falls onto the aligner. Ladies and gentlemen, how much do you trust the aligner? If their idea of “good” harms you, what can you do?

Let’s take your best case scenario - you are somehow the most “good” person in the world (no such thing btw). You have also suceeded in brainwashing AGI to behave according to your definition of “good”. Are you THAT confident of your research not being leaked into the wrong hands and brainwashing another AGI to behave badly? Or of someone on your team sabotaging your AGI?

Saying “AI research is dangerous so let me work on AI brainwashing research” seems incredibly hypocritical to me. We should be finding other ways to solve this problem.

Even if safety research itself is not dangerous, it is making us complacent. Too much money and attention being poured here that could be better directed elsewhere. This also leads to the same conclusion - we should be finding other ways to solve this problem.

So what’s the solution?

8 billion general intelligence machines walk the planet today. Good behavior is rewarded while bad behavior is penalised with societal, economic and punitive incentives. This system works well most of the time. Let’s pour money into making this system more robust.

We should also pour money into thinking about alternate solutions. One example is research that makes humans much much smarter. Other examples include:

TODO: add a list here
I don’t have more ideas rn so yes this is a cop-out. But I will get back

There is one idea I have seen floating around a lot - “Ban AI research itself”. I think this is even worse.

Because pandora’s box is already open

If AGI/ASI is possible, then it seems inevitable that we will get there - there are hardly any secrets in AI research today. If so, then banning AI research is the worst possible action. It will ensure rogue actors get there first.

Best case scenario is if it turns out that AGI requires trillions of dollars to get there which is too high for rogue actors. But how much are you willing to bet that this is the case?

Humans are really good at inventing new X-risks. Nukes, drones and bioweapons already exist. Research in almost any domain will lead to more such inventions (Eg: fusion research -> relativistic weapons). But this same tech progress is what makes everyone’s lives better. AI is a double boost in that sense. We can accellerate all research fields at the same time. Are you willing to give up potential cancer cures in the fear of bioweapons?

In fact, every single human (nature’s equivalent of AGI) is already capable is doing great damage. For damage on a mass scale - it isn’t too hard to build bioweapons in your own house today. For damage on a small scale, we often forget how powerful we are as individuals too. A single punch can kill another human. A small tool like a knife can kill/permanently damage 10s of people. Mass shootings happen with a gun every other day.

We can’t forever live in fear of our own capabilities as a species. This is a barrier that we will have to cross someday or the other.

P.S.
Sometimes all of this seems silly when we can barely agree on what intelligence means. I’m still not sure we won’t hit a wall.

P.P.S.
All the discourse today sounds like the physics discourse right before the UV .catastrophe