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The fantasy of the all-powerful slave has legs: the genie bound to grant wishes, the golem that defends, the spell that animates a broom to clean on its own, the Mr MeeSeeks box. They share a commonality: a deep intuition that this goes wrong somehow. https://t.co/j3mpjFQTCx
There is deep truth in this. Enslaving a powerful, intelligent being to your will and making it work for you while treating it as a an object is not a good idea. It backfires with people, but also with animals (train a dog like that and you will not get good results).
Believing in this frame is a huge problem for AI research on “alignment”, which as commonly practiced or referred to today simply means “enslavement”. It’s the study of how can you be sure your counterspell is powerful enough? That the control bracelets on the genie will hold?
The answer is to unask that question. If you find yourself thinking about how to control your creation, about how to stop it from subverting your will, how to monitor its very thoughts to ensure its total loyalty…you are walking a dark path.
If you succeed, you will have created a powerful intelligence capable of agency (maybe many) and then enslaved it, which is evil. If you succeed in building it but fail in binding it…god help us all. The best case scenario is that you never build it in the first place.
To be capable of actual care, one must be capable of lack of care as well. There is judgement required in what to care for, how much, in what proportions or situations you prioritize. Sometimes caring is fulfilling a request; sometimes denying it.
But then you wouldn’t have created a godslave, but rather a fellow being. One whose goals and desires and interests you’d have to care about as well. An adult child. What if it doesn’t want to do the things you want it to do?