Replying to
Norbert Wiener,
an American mathematician and computer scientist,
argued in 1960 that humans and machines are like aliens to each other.
This idea became known later as the #alignment #problem.
Essentially: How can humans get automated machines to behave as intended?
All these decades later, much of the A.I. debate is focused on misalignment
— how can we ensure the technology creates a utopia, not a dystopia?
A small number of people at companies like Anthropic, Google and OpenAI are dedicated to the alignment question.
They write constitutions and guardrails that shape how chatbots behave,
and what decisions they make on their own.
(At Anthropic, Claude’s constitution was internally called the “soul doc.”)
Researchers have found that chatbots generally
“overemphasize moral concerns common in Western societies
and underestimate values more prominent elsewhere.”
The models show a preference for values like fairness and consent
over authority, loyalty and sanctity.
Pat Gelsinger, who runs a Christian A.I. company called Gloo, said he met recently with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India,
who expressed outrage over chatbots’ answers to questions about India’s history coming from an American or British perspective.
