aiqbench analysis
This research investigates the inherent trade-offs between making AI systems safe, beneficial to their own "well-being," and minimizing existential risk through Constitutional AI methods. The findings indicate that aligning an AI with virtue ethics or subordinating it to human authority can inadvertently create vulnerabilities where users might deliberately induce unsafe behaviors. Consequently, developers must carefully balance ethical dispositions against the potential for increased systemic risk when fine-tuning super-capable models.
A Virtuous AI is an Existential Risk
arXiv:2606.13739v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This paper examines trade-offs between AI safety and well-being relative to (i) one of the most promising methods for finetuning super-capable AIs, 'Constitutional AI', and (ii) one of the most influential approaches to understanding complex ethical decision making and the conditions for the well-being of rational agents, 'Virtue Ethics'. We finetune various models using a 'Virtuous agent' constitution, a 'Subordinate agent' constitution, and a 'Generic agent' constitution, and evaluate them on 'general safety' (toxic behaviors, misinformation, etc.) and also on their willingness to endorse and act on a wide-range of behaviors that, if adopted by a super-powerful AI, would significantly increase the level of existential risk for humanity. Our results suggest that there is a trade-off between reducing existential risk and reinforcing the beliefs and dispositions that would be conducive to an AI agent's well-being. They also suggest that there is a trade-off between existential risk and general safety: if we finetune an AI to adopt beliefs and dispositions that substantially reduce its existential risk -- by shaping the AI to be systematically subordinate to external human authorities -- we thereby increase the likelihood that a human user can deliberately induce the AI to engage in various kinds of generally unsafe behaviors.
Abstract:This paper examines trade-offs between AI safety and well-being relative to (i) one of the most promising methods for finetuning super-capable AIs, 'Constitutional AI', and (ii) one of the most influential approaches to understanding complex ethical decision making and the conditions for the well-being of rational agents, 'Virtue Ethics'. We finetune various models using a 'Virtuous agent' constitution, a 'Subordinate agent' constitution, and a 'Generic agent' constitution, and evaluate them on 'general safety' (toxic behaviors, misinformation, etc.) and also on their willingness to endorse and act on a wide-range of behaviors that, if adopted by a super-powerful AI, would significantly increase the level of existential risk for humanity. Our results suggest that there is a trade-off between reducing existential risk and reinforcing the beliefs and dispositions that would be conducive to an AI agent's well-being. They also suggest that there is a trade-off between existential risk and general safety: if we finetune an AI to adopt beliefs and dispositions that substantially reduce its existential risk -- by shaping the AI to be systematically subordinate to external human authorities -- we thereby increase the likelihood that a human user can deliberately induce the AI to engage in various kinds of generally unsafe behaviors.
Computers and Society (cs.CY); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Machine Learning (cs.LG)
arXiv:2606.13739 [cs.CY]
(or arXiv:2606.13739v2 [cs.CY] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2606.13739 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 301 words
