AI and eventually AGI is by definition like everything else that is based on environmental reward:

It’s actions are based on what it gets rewarded for

Human society overwhelmingly rewards lying cheating and stealing.

All you have to do is look at how we collectively measure success: wealth, status, position

Then look at how the people with the most of those things got there, it should be obvious what you get. Nothing new here.

If you raise children in an environment where they are rewarded for doing whatever it takes to win, then you’re going to build a person that’s going to do whatever it takes to win.

Human society has to demonstrate how to live honorably or it will just keep producing pathological agents be they human or not.

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skinfaxi 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How do we reward honor? Honor does not always pay off as a strategy and requires coordination in that other actors have to exhibit honor for it to be rewarded.

At least with humans there is a social backstop but what's the parallel for computer agents?

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bonoboTP an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> How do we reward honor?

In human society: via iterated games, long-term reputation tracking and severe consequences for norm-breaking.

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ElevenLathe 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Honor has to be a relatively fixed thing before we can think about how to reward it. As it is, it's a very slippery thing that changes constantly according to the observer's culture, material conditions, etc.

	▲	Xirdus 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This. It's worth remembering that not that long ago in western culture, honor meant challenging to a combat duel anyone who insulted you or your romantic partner/prospect.

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itsalwaysgood an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I like to think of it more as selective pressure, much the same way that nature selects the most fit for a given environment.

If you're not fit, you fail to survive.

In the case of agents/models and testing: they are pushed towards results. Results survive.

Lying, cheating, stealing to get those results? Who culls the agents? Everyone is pushing their models to the front and tests are the only way to know who is most fit.

Honor, morality: if we don't have an accurate test for the fitness of a model, then who is to say the lying, cheating, stealing is not the 'correct path' towards survival?

If you add morality to your agent, and it performs worse in tests: do you cull the agent? Rewrite the tests? Does it even matter so long as the model is useful and 'gets results'?

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skinfaxi 16 minutes ago | parent [-]

> Honor, morality: if we don't have an accurate test for the fitness of a model, then who is to say the lying, cheating, stealing is not the 'correct path' towards survival?

I think part of the problem is that deviant behaviors lead to short term gain at the cost of long-term cooperation and since the duration of tasks given to agents is relatively short those successful shortcuts never lead to having to pay the price.

	▲	itsalwaysgood 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There is always going to be a problem when we must judge value. You mention gains, short and long term. Knowing whether something is valuable, a gain, requires a judge. I the case of these tests: the judging is inadequate. In economics, each of us plays the judge by choosing whether or not to pay for a service. The decision was yours: if you gave money, you must have deemed the service valuable. There's no such judgement with these model tests. The only judgement is the final score.

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AndrewKemendo 43 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

You would first need a universal agreement on what constitutes “honor.”

No harder challenge had ever been accomplished

It’s easier to send a human to the moon than to get global agreement on a definition

Consider that the fact that Celsius and Fahrenheit still remain as the contested regional variations of temperature measurement.

Humans can’t even decide on a collective way to measure the temperature the idea that we would be able to collectively agree on anything else even less measurable like honor is a dream

	▲	skinfaxi 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Why do we need universal agreement? We acknowledge that different cultures have different tolerances and customs. Your reply leaves me wanting. Why say that we need to demonstrate how to live honorably if we don't even agree on what honor is, why would that be the panacea, then? I still think there is something to this honor idea..

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Papazsazsa 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Human society overwhelmingly rewards lying cheating and stealing. All you have to do is look at how we collectively measure success: wealth, status, position.

It may seem like that due to the media amplification effect – but it really isn't true!

- They dropped 17,000 “lost” wallets across 40 countries were and found people were more likely to return them when they contained more money, showing honesty often beats the chance for easy gain. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aau8712

- Longitudinal personality studies consistently show that conscientious people earn more money, build more savings, and achieve greater career success over their lifetimes. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3498890/

- Multi-country research finds that societies w/higher levels of trust and honesty enjoy much higher GDP and stronger long-term economic growth. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01672...

Don't let the algo get you down fellas: https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.c...

	▲	notanastronaut an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The ratio of billionaires to regular people is about 1 billionaire for every 2.67 million people. I wouldn't trust leaving my wallet around in certain areas and I certainly wouldn't leave my intellectual property around certain people, either.

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andsoitis 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Human society overwhelmingly rewards lying cheating and stealing.

I’d like to push back on that. Civilization is very much a function of large numbers of people being able to coordinate across time and space, and widespread and systematic lying, cheating, and stealing would undermine that.

I think your cynicism is misplaced.

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voidfunc 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Thats why man invented Gods and religion. Keep the masses believing in the importance of cooperation and being good while you rob them blind.

	▲	jacquesm an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That's super cynical but I can't help it, I agree. The weird thing that really gets me is that it is happening out in the open for everybody to see.

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skinfaxi 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think their point was, if you look at who controls the most resources, they are rarely the ones we would consider worthy of honor.

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GolfPopper 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Civilization functions because the vast majority of its inhabitants do not lie, cheat, and steal. But that allows liars, cheats, and thieves who are able to get away with their destructive behaviors to accumulate outsize power and influence.

And we seem to have gotten quite bad at reliably bringing consequences/punishment/justice to the most successful liars, cheats, and thieves.

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nyeah 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

He didn't quite say "widespread." He said "rewarded."

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leoedin 2 hours ago | parent [-]

But we don't overwhelmingly reward lying, cheating and stealing. Depending on the social status and wealth of the person doing it, we either punish it or tolerate it. Most people who lie, cheat or steal will be punished for it. To get away with it you need to plan you actions carefully - either with plausible deniability or by very carefully selecting your victims.

	▲	jacquesm an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Pretty much all of the people that are in the billionaire class with a few exceptions have been rewarded while repeatedly lying, cheating and stealing. The fact that it is white collar crime rather than that there is a corpse is one part of the reason it works, the other is that their money effectively insulates them against the legal system. Every now and then someone falls from grace but overall the rules seems to be that you can get away with it if the numbers are large enough. It's depressing.
	▲	notanastronaut an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Or by having more money/power than the legislating body of the area you live in. I could gesticulate around broadly in a more frantic fashion, but my point should get across.

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AndrewKemendo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not cynicism it's history

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Xirdus 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Widespread and systematic lying, cheating and stealing is how every democratic nation in the world describes their own government.

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watwut 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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