AI Alignment with Changing and Influenceable Reward Functions

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Carroll, Micah, Foote, Davis, Siththaranjan, Anand, Russell, Stuart, Dragan, Anca
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Carroll, Micah
Foote, Davis
Siththaranjan, Anand
Russell, Stuart
Dragan, Anca
author_facet Carroll, Micah
Foote, Davis
Siththaranjan, Anand
Russell, Stuart
Dragan, Anca
contents Existing AI alignment approaches assume that preferences are static, which is unrealistic: our preferences change, and may even be influenced by our interactions with AI systems themselves. To clarify the consequences of incorrectly assuming static preferences, we introduce Dynamic Reward Markov Decision Processes (DR-MDPs), which explicitly model preference changes and the AI's influence on them. We show that despite its convenience, the static-preference assumption may undermine the soundness of existing alignment techniques, leading them to implicitly reward AI systems for influencing user preferences in ways users may not truly want. We then explore potential solutions. First, we offer a unifying perspective on how an agent's optimization horizon may partially help reduce undesirable AI influence. Then, we formalize different notions of AI alignment that account for preference change from the outset. Comparing the strengths and limitations of 8 such notions of alignment, we find that they all either err towards causing undesirable AI influence, or are overly risk-averse, suggesting that a straightforward solution to the problems of changing preferences may not exist. As there is no avoiding grappling with changing preferences in real-world settings, this makes it all the more important to handle these issues with care, balancing risks and capabilities. We hope our work can provide conceptual clarity and constitute a first step towards AI alignment practices which explicitly account for (and contend with) the changing and influenceable nature of human preferences.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_17713
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AI Alignment with Changing and Influenceable Reward Functions
Carroll, Micah
Foote, Davis
Siththaranjan, Anand
Russell, Stuart
Dragan, Anca
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Existing AI alignment approaches assume that preferences are static, which is unrealistic: our preferences change, and may even be influenced by our interactions with AI systems themselves. To clarify the consequences of incorrectly assuming static preferences, we introduce Dynamic Reward Markov Decision Processes (DR-MDPs), which explicitly model preference changes and the AI's influence on them. We show that despite its convenience, the static-preference assumption may undermine the soundness of existing alignment techniques, leading them to implicitly reward AI systems for influencing user preferences in ways users may not truly want. We then explore potential solutions. First, we offer a unifying perspective on how an agent's optimization horizon may partially help reduce undesirable AI influence. Then, we formalize different notions of AI alignment that account for preference change from the outset. Comparing the strengths and limitations of 8 such notions of alignment, we find that they all either err towards causing undesirable AI influence, or are overly risk-averse, suggesting that a straightforward solution to the problems of changing preferences may not exist. As there is no avoiding grappling with changing preferences in real-world settings, this makes it all the more important to handle these issues with care, balancing risks and capabilities. We hope our work can provide conceptual clarity and constitute a first step towards AI alignment practices which explicitly account for (and contend with) the changing and influenceable nature of human preferences.
title AI Alignment with Changing and Influenceable Reward Functions
topic Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.17713