Subtitle: Developing AI employees that are safer than human ones.

My goal as an AI safety researcher is to put myself out of a job.

I don’t worry too much about how planet sized brains will shape galaxies in 100 years. That's something for AI systems to figure out.

Instead, I worry about safely replacing human researchers with AI agents, at which point human researchers are “obsolete.” The situation is not necessarily fine after human obsolescence; however, the bulk of risks that are addressable by human technical researchers (like me) will have been addressed.

This post explains how developers might safely “pass the buck” to AI.

I first clarify what I mean by “pass the buck” (section 1) and explain why I think AI safety researchers should make safely passing the buck their primary end goal – rather than focus on the loftier ambition of aligning superintelligence (section [...]

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Outline:

(19:08) 1. Briefly responding to objections

(21:54) 2. What I mean by passing the buck to AI

(23:46) 3. Why focus on passing the buck rather than aligning superintelligence.

(28:33) 4. Three strategies for passing the buck to AI

(31:35) 5. Conditions that imply that passing the buck improves safety

(34:32) 6. The capability condition

(38:31) 7. The trust condition

(39:27) 8. Argument #1: M_1 agents are approximately aligned and will maintain their alignment until they have completed their deferred task

(49:28) 9. Argument #2: M_1 agents cannot subvert autonomous control measures while they complete the deferred task

(50:51) Analogies to dictatorships suggest that autonomous control might be viable

(52:51) Listing potential autonomous control measures

(56:19) How to evaluate autonomous control

(58:17) 10. Argument #3: Returns to additional human-supervised research are small

(01:00:38) Control measures

(01:05:03) 11. Argument #4: AI agents are incentivized to behave as safely as humans

(01:11:25) 12. Conclusion

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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