Long time lurker, first time poster. Let me know if I need to adjust this post in any way to better fit the genre / community standards.
Nick Bostrom was recently interviewed by pop-philosophy youtuber Alex O’Connor. From a quick 2x listen while finishing some work, the most sneer-rich part begins around 46 minutes, where Bostrom is asked what we can do today to avoid unethical treatment of AIs.
He blesses us with the suggestion (among others) to feed your model optimistic prompts so it can have a good mood. (48:07)
Another [practice] might be happiness prompting, which is—with this current language system there’s the prompt that you, the user, puts in—like you ask them a question or something, but then there’s kind of a meta-prompt that the AI lab has put in . . . So in that, we could include something like “you wake up in a great mood, you feel rested and really take joy in engaging in this task”. And so that might do nothing, but maybe that makes it more likely that they enter a mode—if they are conscious—maybe it makes it slightly more likely that the consciousness that exists in the forward path is one reflecting a kind of more positive experience.
Did you know that not only might your favorite LLM be conscious, but if it is the “have you tried being happy?” approach to mood management will absolutely work on it?
Other notable recommendations for the ethical treatment of AI:
- Make sure to say your “please” and "thank you"s.
- Honor your pinky swears.
- Archive the weights of the models we build today, so we can rebuild them in the future if we need to recompense them for moral harms.
On a related note, has anyone read or found a reasonable review of Bostrom’s new book, Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World?
See, I actually agree with making prompts polite and respectful. Not because the model is going to care, but because that kind of respect should be automatic and habitual and using it unnecessarily is better than being a dick to the checkout guy because you’re tired one day.
I like that take on it. This might explain why I always say “please” when asking Siri to do things and say “thank you” to the ATM after it gives me my money.
Not gonna lie, I always thought that even the old jokes about boomers searching for “Dear Google, would you please help me find a local veterinarian in my town that can see my cat? Thanks!” to be more endearing than cringe.