OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, believes it’s on the cusp of transforming our world with powerful AI systems. At minimum, it thinks these will fundamentally change how we work and live. At maximum, it could make our world unrecognizable overnight.
To make this go well, instead of catastrophically badly, OpenAI has created what it calls the superalignment team, which tries to understand how to make superhuman AI do what we want, instead of doing its own thing.
The team head is Jan Leike, a machine learning researcher who worked at Google’s DeepMind before joining OpenAI. His team is in a race against time: The goal is to figure out how to align powerful AI systems before unaligned powerful AI systems get developed. (An AI system is “aligned” if it’s trying to do the things that humans want, and “unaligned” if it’s trying to do other things outside our control. A big, unanswered question is how well we can tell what our AI systems are trying to do at all.)
“I think alignment is tractable,” Leike told Rob Wiblin on the 80,000 Hours podcast this August. “I think we can actually make a lot of progress if we focus on it and put effort into it. … Honestly, it really feels like we have a real angle of attack on the problem that we can actually iterate on, we can actually build towards. And I think it’s pretty likely going to work, actually. And that’s really, really wild, and it’s really exciting. It’s like we have this hard problem that we’ve been talking about for years and years and years, and now we have a real shot at actually solving it.”
The basic approach is to develop techniques that work to align systems slightly more powerful than the ones we have today, safely build those systems, and then use them to align their successors.
Many people justifiably don’t want to gamble the fate of the world on the success of OpenAI’s internal alignment research team (I don’t, myself, want to take that gamble). But even if one would like to see technical alignment research accompanied with much stronger external oversight, governance, auditing, and measures to prevent the deployment of potentially dangerous systems, technical work on making AI systems safe will certainly be a huge element of any solution to this pressing challenge.
Sometimes, progress on the technical side can open up new options for political and governance solutions. And I think it’s to their immense credit that Leike’s team openly admits the insane stakes of the work they’re doing, and that they are willing to explain how they intend to do it. Their candor means that other researchers can evaluate their approach and figure out if this approach will get us to safe superintelligences — and if not, what will go wrong.
rn
rnFirst, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.rn
rn
rnSecond, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall. rn
rn
rnSo even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)rn
rn
rnIf you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps. “,”article_footer_header”:”Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?“,”use_article_footer”:true,”article_footer_cta_annual_plans”:”{rn “default_plan”: 1,rn “plans”: [rn {rn “amount”: 50,rn “plan_id”: 99546rn },rn {rn “amount”: 100,rn “plan_id”: 99547rn },rn {rn “amount”: 150,rn “plan_id”: 99548rn },rn {rn “amount”: 200,rn “plan_id”: 99549rn }rn ]rn}”,”article_footer_cta_button_annual_copy”:”year”,”article_footer_cta_button_copy”:”Yes, I’ll give”,”article_footer_cta_button_monthly_copy”:”month”,”article_footer_cta_default_frequency”:”monthly”,”article_footer_cta_monthly_plans”:”{rn “default_plan”: 0,rn “plans”: [rn {rn “amount”: 5,rn “plan_id”: 99543rn },rn {rn “amount”: 10,rn “plan_id”: 99544rn },rn {rn “amount”: 25,rn “plan_id”: 99545rn },rn {rn “amount”: 50,rn “plan_id”: 46947rn }rn ]rn}”,”article_footer_cta_once_plans”:”{rn “default_plan”: 0,rn “plans”: [rn {rn “amount”: 20,rn “plan_id”: 69278rn },rn {rn “amount”: 50,rn “plan_id”: 48880rn },rn {rn “amount”: 100,rn “plan_id”: 46607rn },rn {rn “amount”: 250,rn “plan_id”: 46946rn }rn ]rn}”,”use_article_footer_cta_read_counter”:true,”use_article_footer_cta”:true,”groups”:[{“base_type”:”EntryGroup”,”id”:111287,”timestamp”:1701257225,”title”:”The Future Perfect 50″,”type”:”SiteGroup”,”url”:”https://www.vox.com/future-perfect-50″,”slug”:”future-perfect-50″,”community_logo”:”rn“,”community_name”:”Vox”,”community_url”:”https://www.vox.com/”,”cross_community”:false,”entry_count”:94,”always_show”:false,”description”:”The scientists, thinkers, scholars, writers, and activists building a more perfect future.”,”disclosure”:””,”cover_image_url”:””,”cover_image”:null,”title_image_url”:””,”intro_image”:null,”four_up_see_more_text”:”View All”,”primary”:true},{“base_type”:”EntryGroup”,”id”:27524,”timestamp”:1701257408,”title”:”Technology”,”type”:”SiteGroup”,”url”:”https://www.vox.com/technology”,”slug”:”technology”,”community_logo”:”rn“,”community_name”:”Vox”,”community_url”:”https://www.vox.com/”,”cross_community”:false,”entry_count”:24555,”always_show”:false,”description”:”Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing — and changing us.”,”disclosure”:””,”cover_image_url”:””,”cover_image”:null,”title_image_url”:””,”intro_image”:null,”four_up_see_more_text”:”View All”,”primary”:false},{“base_type”:”EntryGroup”,”id”:76815,”timestamp”:1701257225,”title”:”Future Perfect”,”type”:”SiteGroup”,”url”:”https://www.vox.com/future-perfect”,”slug”:”future-perfect”,”community_logo”:”rn“,”community_name”:”Vox”,”community_url”:”https://www.vox.com/”,”cross_community”:false,”entry_count”:1749,”always_show”:false,”description”:”Finding the best ways to do good. “,”disclosure”:””,”cover_image_url”:””,”cover_image”:null,”title_image_url”:”https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/16290809/future_perfect_sized.0.jpg”,”intro_image”:null,”four_up_see_more_text”:”View All”,”primary”:false},{“base_type”:”EntryGroup”,”id”:80311,”timestamp”:1701256997,”title”:”Artificial Intelligence”,”type”:”SiteGroup”,”url”:”https://www.vox.com/artificial-intelligence”,”slug”:”artificial-intelligence”,”community_logo”:”rn“,”community_name”:”Vox”,”community_url”:”https://www.vox.com/”,”cross_community”:false,”entry_count”:413,”always_show”:false,”description”:”Vox’s coverage of how AI is shaping everything from text and image generation to how we live. “,”disclosure”:””,”cover_image_url”:””,”cover_image”:null,”title_image_url”:””,”intro_image”:null,”four_up_see_more_text”:”View All”,”primary”:false},{“base_type”:”EntryGroup”,”id”:102794,”timestamp”:1701256997,”title”:”Innovation”,”type”:”SiteGroup”,”url”:”https://www.vox.com/innovation”,”slug”:”innovation”,”community_logo”:”rn“,”community_name”:”Vox”,”community_url”:”https://www.vox.com/”,”cross_community”:false,”entry_count”:222,”always_show”:false,”description”:””,”disclosure”:””,”cover_image_url”:””,”cover_image”:null,”title_image_url”:””,”intro_image”:null,”four_up_see_more_text”:”View All”,”primary”:false}],”layout”:””,”featured_placeable”:false,”video_placeable”:false,”package_label”:{“url”:”https://www.vox.com/23950804/future-perfect-50-list-2023-ai-animal-rights-poverty-health-climate”,”title”:”The 2023 Future Perfect 50″},”package_logo”:null,”disclaimer”:null,”volume_placement”:”lede”,”video_autoplay”:false,”youtube_url”:”http://bit.ly/voxyoutube”,”facebook_video_url”:””,”play_in_modal”:true,”user_preferences_for_privacy_enabled”:false,”show_branded_logos”:true,”uses_video_lede”:false,”image_brightness”:”image-light”,”display_logo_lockup”:false,”svg_logo_data”:”“}” wp_automatic_readability=”15.740093240093″>
First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.
Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.
So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)
If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.
