I worked at OpenAI for three years, from 2021-2024 on the Alignment team, which eventually became the Superalignment team. I worked on scalable oversight, part of the team developing critiques as a technique for using language models to spot mistakes in other language models. I then worked to refine an idea from Nick Cammarata into a method for using language model to generate explanations for features in language models. I was then promoted to managing a team of 4 people which worked on trying to understand language model features in context, leading to the release of an open source "transformer debugger" tool. I resigned from OpenAI on February 15, 2024.

In my latest post I talked about whether unaligned AIs would produce more or less utilitarian value than aligned AIs. To be honest, I'm still quite confused about why many people seem to disagree with the view I expressed, and I'm interested in engaging more to get a better understanding of their perspective. At the least, I thought I'd write a bit more about my thoughts here, and clarify my own views on the matter, in case anyone is interested in trying to understand my perspective. The core thesis that was trying to defend is the following view: My view: It is likely that by default, unaligned AIs—AIs that humans are likely to actually build if we do not completely solve key technical alignment problems—will produce comparable utilitarian value compared to humans, both directly (by being conscious themselves) and indirectly (via their impacts on the world). This is because unaligned AIs will likely both be conscious in a morally relevant sense, and they will likely share human moral concepts, since they will be trained on human data. Some people seem to merely disagree with my view that unaligned AIs are likely to be conscious in a morally relevant sense. And a few others have a semantic disagreement with me in which they define AI alignment in moral terms, rather than the ability to make an AI share the preferences of the AI's operator.  But beyond these two objections, which I feel I understand fairly well, there's also significant disagreement about other questions. Based on my discussions, I've attempted to distill the following counterargument to my thesis, which I fully acknowledge does not capture everyone's views on this subject: Perceived counter-argument: The vast majority of utilitarian value in the future will come from agents with explicitly utilitarian preferences, rather than those who incidentally achieve utilitarian objectives. At present, only a small proportion of humanity holds partly utilitarian views. However, as unaligned AIs will differ from humans across numerous dimensions, it is plausible that they will possess negligible utilitarian impulses, in stark contrast to humanity's modest (but non-negligible) utilitarian tendencies. As a result, it is plausible that almost all value would be lost, from a utilitarian perspective, if AIs were unaligned with human preferences. Again, I'm not sure if this summary accurately represents what people believe. However, it's what some seem to be saying. I personally think this argument is weak. But I feel I've had trouble making my views very clear on this subject, so I thought I'd try one more time to explain where I'm coming from here. Let me respond to the two main parts of the argument in some amount of detail: (i) "The vast majority of utilitarian value in the future will come from agents with explicitly utilitarian preferences, rather than those who incidentally achieve utilitarian objectives." My response: I am skeptical of the notion that the bulk of future utilitarian value will originate from agents with explicitly utilitarian preferences. This clearly does not reflect our current world, where the primary sources of happiness and suffering are not the result of deliberate utilitarian planning. Moreover, I do not see compelling theoretical grounds to anticipate a major shift in this regard. I think the intuition behind the argument here is something like this: In the future, it will become possible to create "hedonium"—matter that is optimized to generate the maximum amount of utility or well-being. If hedonium can be created, it would likely be vastly more important than anything else in the universe in terms of its capacity to generate positive utilitarian value. The key assumption is that hedonium would primarily be created by agents who have at least some explicit utilitarian goals, even if those goals are fairly weak. Given the astronomical value that hedonium could potentially generate, even a tiny fraction of the universe's resources being dedicated to hedonium production could outweigh all other sources of happiness and suffering. Therefore, if unaligned AIs would be less likely to produce hedonium than aligned AIs (due to not having explicitly utilitarian goals), this would be a major reason to prefer aligned AI, even if unaligned AIs would otherwise generate comparable levels of value to aligned AIs in all other respects. If this is indeed the intuition driving the argument, I think it falls short for a straightforward reason. The creation of matter-optimized-for-happiness is more likely to be driven by the far more common motives of self-interest and concern for one's inner circle (friends, family, tribe, etc.) than by explicit utilitarian goals. If unaligned AIs are conscious, they would presumably have ample motives to optimize for positive states of consciousness, even if not for explicitly utilitarian reasons. In other words, agents optimizing for their own happiness, or the happiness of those they care about, seem likely to be the primary force behind the creation of hedonium-like structures. They may not frame it in utilitarian terms, but they will still be striving to maximize happiness and well-being for themselves and others they care about regardless. And it seems natural to assume that, with advanced technology, they would optimize pretty hard for their own happiness and well-being, just as a utilitarian might optimize hard for happiness when creating hedonium. In contrast to the number of agents optimizing for their own happiness, the number of agents explicitly motivated by utilitarian concerns is likely to be much smaller. Yet both forms of happiness will presumably be heavily optimized. So even if explicit utilitarians are more likely to pursue hedonium per se, their impact would likely be dwarfed by the efforts of the much larger group of agents driven by more personal motives for happiness-optimization. Since both groups would be optimizing for happiness, the fact that hedonium is similarly optimized for happiness doesn't seem to provide much reason to think that it would outweigh the utilitarian value of more mundane, and far more common, forms of utility-optimization. To be clear, I think it's totally possible that there's something about this argument that I'm missing here. And there are a lot of potential objections I'm skipping over here. But on a basic level, I mostly just lack the intuition that the thing we should care about, from a utilitarian perspective, is the existence of explicit utilitarians in the future, for the aforementioned reasons. The fact that our current world isn't well described by the idea that what matters most is the number of explicit utilitarians, strengthens my point here. (ii) "At present, only a small proportion of humanity holds partly utilitarian views. However, as unaligned AIs will differ from humans across numerous dimensions, it is plausible that they will possess negligible utilitarian impulses, in stark contrast to humanity's modest (but non-negligible) utilitarian tendencies." My response: Since only a small portion of humanity is explicitly utilitarian, the argument's own logic suggests that there is significant potential for AIs to be even more utilitarian than humans, given the relatively low bar set by humanity's limited utilitarian impulses. While I agree we shouldn't assume AIs will be more utilitarian than humans without specific reasons to believe so, it seems entirely plausible that factors like selection pressures for altruism could lead to this outcome. Indeed, commercial AIs seem to be selected to be nice and helpful to users, which (at least superficially) seems "more utilitarian" than the default (primarily selfish-oriented) impulses of most humans. The fact that humans are only slightly utilitarian should mean that even small forces could cause AIs to exceed human levels of utilitarianism. Moreover, as I've said previously, it's probable that unaligned AIs will possess morally relevant consciousness, at least in part due to the sophistication of their cognitive processes. They are also likely to absorb and reflect human moral concepts as a result of being trained on human-generated data. Crucially, I expect these traits to emerge even if the AIs do not share human preferences.  To see where I'm coming from, consider how humans routinely are "misaligned" with each other, in the sense of not sharing each other's preferences, and yet still share moral concepts and a common culture. For example, an employee can share moral concepts with their employer while having very different consumption preferences from them. This picture is pretty much how I think we should primarily think about unaligned AIs that are trained on human data, and shaped heavily by techniques like RLHF or DPO. Given these considerations, I find it unlikely that unaligned AIs would completely lack any utilitarian impulses whatsoever. However, I do agree that even a small risk of this outcome is worth taking seriously. I'm simply skeptical that such low-probability scenarios should be the primary factor in assessing the value of AI alignment research. Intuitively, I would expect the arguments for prioritizing alignment to be more clear-cut and compelling than "if we fail to align AIs, then there's a small chance that these unaligned AIs might have zero utilitarian value, so we should make sure AIs are aligned instead". If low probability scenarios are the strongest considerations in favor of alignment, that seems to undermine the robustness of the case for prioritizing this work. While it's appropriate to consider even low-probability risks when the stakes are high, I'm doubtful that small probabilities should be the dominant consideration in this context. I think the core reasons for focusing on alignment should probably be more straightforward and less reliant on complicated chains of logic than this type of argument suggests. In particular, as I've said before, I think it's quite reasonable to think that we should align AIs to humans for the sake of humans. In other words, I think it's perfectly reasonable to admit that solving AI alignment might be a great thing to ensure human flourishing in particular. But if you're a utilitarian, and not particularly attached to human preferences per se (i.e., you're non-speciesist), I don't think you should be highly confident that an unaligned AI-driven future would be much worse than an aligned one, from that perspective.

I've recently made an update to our Announcement on the future of Wytham Abbey, saying that since this announcement, we have decided that we will use some of the proceeds on Effective Venture's general costs.

Edgy and data-driven TED talk on how the older generations in America are undermining the youth. Worth a watch.  

Mobius (the Bay Area-based family foundation where I work) is exploring new ways to remove animals from the food system. We're looking for a part-time Program Manager to help get more talented people who are knowledgable about farmed animal welfare and/or alternative proteins into US government roles. This entrepreneurial generalist would pilot a 3-6 month program to support promising students and early graduates with applying to and securing entry-level Congressional roles. We think success here could significantly improve thoughtful policymaking on farmed animal welfare and/or alternative proteins.  You can see more about the role here. Key details on the role: * Application deadline:  Tuesday 28th of May, at 23:59pm PT. Apply here. * Contract: 15-20 hours per week for 3-6 months, with the possibility of extending. * Location: Remote in the US. * Salary: $29-38 per hour (equivalent to approx. $60,000-$80,000/year) depending on experience. For exceptional candidates, we’re happy to discuss higher compensation. This would be a contractor role, with no additional benefits. Please share with potentially interested people!