Hybrid Approaches for Moral Value Alignment in AI Agents: a Manifesto

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Tennant, Elizaveta, Hailes, Stephen, Musolesi, Mirco
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Tennant, Elizaveta
Hailes, Stephen
Musolesi, Mirco
author_facet Tennant, Elizaveta
Hailes, Stephen
Musolesi, Mirco
contents Increasing interest in ensuring the safety of next-generation Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems calls for novel approaches to embedding morality into autonomous agents. This goal differs qualitatively from traditional task-specific AI methodologies. In this paper, we provide a systematization of existing approaches to the problem of introducing morality in machines - modelled as a continuum. Our analysis suggests that popular techniques lie at the extremes of this continuum - either being fully hard-coded into top-down, explicit rules, or entirely learned in a bottom-up, implicit fashion with no direct statement of any moral principle (this includes learning from human feedback, as applied to the training and finetuning of large language models, or LLMs). Given the relative strengths and weaknesses of each type of methodology, we argue that more hybrid solutions are needed to create adaptable and robust, yet controllable and interpretable agentic systems. To that end, this paper discusses both the ethical foundations (including deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics) and implementations of morally aligned AI systems. We present a series of case studies that rely on intrinsic rewards, moral constraints or textual instructions, applied to either pure-Reinforcement Learning or LLM-based agents. By analysing these diverse implementations under one framework, we compare their relative strengths and shortcomings in developing morally aligned AI systems. We then discuss strategies for evaluating the effectiveness of moral learning agents. Finally, we present open research questions and implications for the future of AI safety and ethics which are emerging from this hybrid framework.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_01818
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hybrid Approaches for Moral Value Alignment in AI Agents: a Manifesto
Tennant, Elizaveta
Hailes, Stephen
Musolesi, Mirco
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
Machine Learning
Multiagent Systems
Increasing interest in ensuring the safety of next-generation Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems calls for novel approaches to embedding morality into autonomous agents. This goal differs qualitatively from traditional task-specific AI methodologies. In this paper, we provide a systematization of existing approaches to the problem of introducing morality in machines - modelled as a continuum. Our analysis suggests that popular techniques lie at the extremes of this continuum - either being fully hard-coded into top-down, explicit rules, or entirely learned in a bottom-up, implicit fashion with no direct statement of any moral principle (this includes learning from human feedback, as applied to the training and finetuning of large language models, or LLMs). Given the relative strengths and weaknesses of each type of methodology, we argue that more hybrid solutions are needed to create adaptable and robust, yet controllable and interpretable agentic systems. To that end, this paper discusses both the ethical foundations (including deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics) and implementations of morally aligned AI systems. We present a series of case studies that rely on intrinsic rewards, moral constraints or textual instructions, applied to either pure-Reinforcement Learning or LLM-based agents. By analysing these diverse implementations under one framework, we compare their relative strengths and shortcomings in developing morally aligned AI systems. We then discuss strategies for evaluating the effectiveness of moral learning agents. Finally, we present open research questions and implications for the future of AI safety and ethics which are emerging from this hybrid framework.
title Hybrid Approaches for Moral Value Alignment in AI Agents: a Manifesto
topic Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
Machine Learning
Multiagent Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.01818