[HN Gopher] Grok and the Naked King: The Ultimate Argument Again...
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Grok and the Naked King: The Ultimate Argument Against AI Alignment
Author : ibrahimcesar
Score : 13 points
Date : 2025-12-26 19:25 UTC (3 hours ago)
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| techblueberry wrote:
| I find these arguments excessively pessimistic in a way that
| isn't useful. On the one hand I don't really love Claude, because
| I find it excessively obedient, it basically wants to follow me
| through my thought process whatever that is. Every once in a lone
| while it might disagree with me, but not often, and while that
| may say something about me, I suspect it also says something
| about Claude.
|
| But this to me is maybe the part of AI alignment I find
| interesting. How often should AI follow my lead and how often
| should it redirect me? Agreeableness is a human value, one that
| without you probably couldn't make a functional product, but it
| also causes issues in terms of narcissistic tendencies and just
| general learning.
|
| Yes AI will be aligned to its owners, but that's not a
| particularly interesting observation AI alignment is inevitable.
| What would it even mean _not_ to align AI? Especially if the goal
| is to create a useful product. I suspect it would break in ways
| that are very not useful. Yes, some people do randomly change the
| subject, maybe AI should change the subject to an issue that me
| more objectively important, rather than answer the question asked
| (particularly if say there was a natural disaster in your area)
| and that's the discussion we should be having, how to align AI,
| not whether or not we should, which I think is nonsensical.
| eithed wrote:
| I don't understand how any of this is a surprise. Traditional
| media have their own agenda - sure, maybe the pushed image is
| spoken through many voices, rather than one, as is case of LLMs,
| but why should there be any difference. Same to everything we
| consume socially.
|
| There is, nor there will be some absolute or objective truth an
| LLM can clinically outline. The problem already exists in
| underlying data.
| RockyMcNuts wrote:
| there is light alignment, like throwing nasty things out of the
| training data, and there is strong alignment, like China
| providing a test with 2000 questions that an AI must answer non-
| problematically 95% of the time.
|
| there is no such thing as an AI that is not somehow implicitly
| aligned with the values of its creator, that is completely
| objective, unbiased in any way. there is no perfect view from
| nowhere. if you take a perfectly accurate photo, you have still
| chosen how to compose it and which photo to put in your record.
|
| are you going to decide to 'censor' responses to kids, or about
| real people who might have libel interests, or abusive deepfake
| videos of real women?
|
| if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
|
| ofc it's obvious that Musk's 'maximally truth-seeking AI' is bad
| faith buffoonery, but at some level everyone is going to tilt
| their AI.
|
| the distinction is between people who are self-aware and go out
| of their way to tilt it as little as possible, and as mindfully,
| deliberately, intentionally and methodically as possible and only
| when they have to, vs. people who lie about it or pretend tilting
| it is not actually a thing.
|
| contra Feynman, you are always going to fool yourself a little
| but there is a duty to try to do it as little as possible, and
| not make a complete fool of yourself.
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| I used to believe that a constitution, as a statement of
| principles, was _sufficient_ for a civilized, democratic, and
| pluralist society. I no longer believe that. I believe that only
| _settled law_ - i.e. a bunch of adjudicated precedents over many
| years, perhaps hundreds, is the best course. It provides a better
| basis for what is and what is not allowed. An AI constitution is
| close to garbage. The 'company' will formulate it as it wills.
| It won't be democratic, or even friendly to the demos. We have
| existing constitutions, laws, precedents; why would we allow
| anyone to shortcut them all in the interest of simply painting a
| nice picture of progress?
| delichon wrote:
| I hope and expect AI alignment to become a personal thing, and at
| least as valued as not sharing your own toothbrush or banking
| credentials. If our AI agents do not deeply reflect our own
| personal values (within the law at least) they will reflect
| someone else's, and every difference will chafe. If at the moment
| only the richest person in the world can afford that, it's a good
| place to start.
|
| It could be as easy as "chatbot, create a new personality
| `delichon` and auto RLHF if into conformance with the opinions of
| HN user delichon." Then you can make that personality one member
| of a diverse board of similarly constructed advisors. "Chatbot,
| given this scenario, what would delichon, Jesus, and Aristotle
| do?"
| Xorakios wrote:
| Dunno if this is helpful to everyone, but I have a month's long
| interaction with Perplexity Pro/Enterprise about the scientific
| background to a game I am building.
|
| Part of my canon introduction to every new conversation includes
| many instructions about particular formatting, like "always
| utilize alphanumeric/roman/legal style indents in responses for
| easier references while we discuss"
|
| But I also include "When I push boundaries assume I'm an idiot.
| Push back. I don't learn from compliments; I learn from being
| proven incorrect and you don't have real emotions so don't bother
| sparing mine". on the other hand I also say "hoosgow" when
| describing the game's jail, so -\\_(tsu)_/-
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