Deliberative Technology for Alignment

TL;DR

This paper discusses the potential of deliberative technology to align powerful AI systems with human values, emphasizing its current use in institutions and the opportunity to prevent catastrophic outcomes from superhuman AGI.

Contribution

It highlights the role of deliberative technology in AI alignment and proposes a symbiotic approach to enhance alignment as AI capabilities grow.

Findings

Deliberative technology is already used in governance and diplomacy.

There is a window of opportunity to align powerful AI with human will.

A symbiotic coupling between AI and deliberative systems could improve alignment.

Abstract

For humanity to maintain and expand its agency into the future, the most powerful systems we create must be those which act to align the future with the will of humanity. The most powerful systems today are massive institutions like governments, firms, and NGOs. Deliberative technology is already being used across these institutions to help align governance and diplomacy with human will, and modern AI is poised to make this technology significantly better. At the same time, the race to superhuman AGI is already underway, and the AI systems it gives rise to may become the most powerful systems of the future. Failure to align the impact of such powerful AI with the will of humanity may lead to catastrophic consequences, while success may unleash abundance. Right now, there is a window of opportunity to use deliberative technology to align the impact of powerful AI with the will of humanity. Moreover, it may be possible to engineer a symbiotic coupling between powerful AI and deliberative alignment systems such that the quality of alignment improves as AI capabilities increase.