Nathan Gardels, The Babelian Tower Of AI Alignment, Noema, April 26, 2024:
As generative AI models become ever more powerful on their way to surpassing human intelligence, there has been much discussion about how they must align with human values so they end up serving our species instead of becoming our new masters. But what are those values?
The problem is that there is no universal agreement on one conception of the good life, nor the values and rights that flow from that incommensurate diversity, which suits all times, all places and all peoples. From the ancient Tower of Babel to the latest large language models, human nature stubbornly resists the rationalization of the many into the one.
Despite the surface appearance of technological convergence, a deep ontological plurality — profoundly different beliefs about the nature of being — still informs the active values of variegated societies.
Silicon Valley Vs. China
This is most readily evident in the politico-cultural clash of the leading AI powers, Silicon Valley and China. At the risk of reductive essentialism for the purpose of brevity, the values of the former are aligned with the libertarian worldview of the sovereign individual long cultivated in the Judeo-Christian West. The values of the latter are aligned with the concept of the collectively embedded person rooted in Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist beliefs of social interdependence.
An early mission statement by OpenAI, which developed GPT, reflects the deep well from which its innovations have sprung: “We believe AI should be an extension of individual human wills and, in the spirit of liberty, as broadly and evenly distributed as possible.”
By contrast, after Alibaba released its latest version of generative AI in 2023, the Cyberspace Administration of China quickly laid down the law: “Content generated by generative artificial intelligence should embody core socialist values and must not contain any content that subverts state power, advocates the overthrow of the socialist system, incites splitting the country or undermines national unity.”
And of course there is diversity in the West, not to mention the rest of the world. India? The Middle East? Africa? The Pacific nations?
There's more at the link.
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