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Main Authors: Kovarik, Vojtech, van Merwijk, Christian, Mattsson, Ida
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05540
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author Kovarik, Vojtech
van Merwijk, Christian
Mattsson, Ida
author_facet Kovarik, Vojtech
van Merwijk, Christian
Mattsson, Ida
contents In an effort to inform the discussion surrounding existential risks from AI, we formulate Extinction-level Goodhart's Law as "Virtually any goal specification, pursued to the extreme, will result in the extinction of humanity", and we aim to understand which formal models are suitable for investigating this hypothesis. Note that we remain agnostic as to whether Extinction-level Goodhart's Law holds or not. As our key contribution, we identify a set of conditions that are necessary for a model that aims to be informative for evaluating specific arguments for Extinction-level Goodhart's Law. Since each of the conditions seems to significantly contribute to the complexity of the resulting model, formally evaluating the hypothesis might be exceedingly difficult. This raises the possibility that whether the risk of extinction from artificial intelligence is real or not, the underlying dynamics might be invisible to current scientific methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_05540
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Extinction Risks from AI: Invisible to Science?
Kovarik, Vojtech
van Merwijk, Christian
Mattsson, Ida
Computers and Society
Machine Learning
In an effort to inform the discussion surrounding existential risks from AI, we formulate Extinction-level Goodhart's Law as "Virtually any goal specification, pursued to the extreme, will result in the extinction of humanity", and we aim to understand which formal models are suitable for investigating this hypothesis. Note that we remain agnostic as to whether Extinction-level Goodhart's Law holds or not. As our key contribution, we identify a set of conditions that are necessary for a model that aims to be informative for evaluating specific arguments for Extinction-level Goodhart's Law. Since each of the conditions seems to significantly contribute to the complexity of the resulting model, formally evaluating the hypothesis might be exceedingly difficult. This raises the possibility that whether the risk of extinction from artificial intelligence is real or not, the underlying dynamics might be invisible to current scientific methods.
title Extinction Risks from AI: Invisible to Science?
topic Computers and Society
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05540