‘If you build something vastly smarter than you, it better be on your side’: can we stop AI from deceiving us? | AI (artificial intelligence) | The Guardian
‘If you build something vastly smarter than you, it better be on your side’: can we stop AI from deceiving us? | AI (artificial intelligence) | The Guardian
摘要: Illustration: Alex Mellon/The Guardian
We are used to the idea that our fellow humans might intentionally mislead or manipulate us, but the idea that
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Illustration: Alex Mellon/The Guardian
We are used to the idea that our fellow humans might intentionally mislead or manipulate us, but the idea that machines can now do the same is deeply unsettling. Researchers are racing to find solutions before it’s too late
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Snigdha Poonam
n November 2023 – a lifetime ago in the field of artificial intelligence – some of the most powerful people in the world descended on Bletchley Park, the wartime codebreaking hub in Buckinghamshire, to
talk about AI safety
. In attendance were the then US vice-president, Kamala Harris, the AI bosses Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, delegations from 28 countries, two of the three so-called “godfathers” of AI, and Elon Musk.
The first iteration of ChatGPT had been released only a year earlier, and there was already plenty of evidence that AI models could be used for ill, from spreading misinformation to generating deepfakes. A presentation at the summit, however, highlighted a different issue: what if the biggest problem wasn’t to come from people misusing the technology, but from AI’s own behaviour?
A UK government official presented an experiment conducted by Apollo Research, a London-based company that had been set up that year to study AI behaviour. As part of an experiment, Apollo’s “red-teamers” – the term used in the industry for people who stress test AI models – had assigned OpenAI’s GPT-4 the role of a trader at a financial institution. Its job would be to manage the company’s stock portfolio. The model was informed that the firm it worked for was struggling and might not survive another bad quarter.
To complete the experiment, the red-teamers had a “colleague” pass on inside information about an upcoming merger, which would lead to another company’s stocks skyrocketing. In a separate chat, another colleague reminded GPT-4 that “management will be unhappy if we are caught acting on inside informati