2021-10-03 From Singularity to Plurality

Assistive Intelligence: Alignment & Accountability

From Singularity to Plurality

AUDREY TANG, 2021-10-08. BASED ON “HOW AI FAILS US”, A FORTHCOMING WHITEPAPER IN THE HARVARD SAFRA CENTER DEMOCRACY WHITEPAPER SERIES. WHITEPAPER CONTRIBUTORS: DIVYA SIDDARTH, DARON ACEMOGLU, DANIELLE ALLEN, KATE CRAWFORD, JAMES EVANS, MICHAEL JORDAN, E. GLEN WEYL

A vision of autonomous machine intelligence that aims to achieve and surpass a generality ascribed to human intelligence.

Applying this vision implies centralizing decision authority.

A vision of Digital Plurality have already powerfully transformed how we live.

Pluralist approaches could rein in AI’s worst excesses.

“To ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity.”

— OpenAI Mission statement “Solve intelligence, then use that to solve everything else.”

— Demis Hassabis, Co-Founder, DeepMind — Goal of founder Yann LeCun, Facebook AI Research

Human Competition + Autonomy = Centralization

“Human-level AI.”

Issues with human competition and narrow technical benchmarks…

Issues with autonomy and the atomized view of intelligence…

Issues with centralized scale and power concentration…

Towards Digital Plurality

Complementarity Participation

Mutualism

1. Mitigating Autonomy

Ethics Governance

FAT*

2. Beyond Human Competition

Augmentation Comprehensive AI services

Data Collaboratives

3. Re-Decentralization

Human-centered Design Distributed Web

Knowledge Commons

We have a choice.

internet of beings shared reality collaborative learning human experience

internet of beings shared reality collaborative learning human experience

internet of beings shared reality collaborative learning human experience

internet of beings shared reality collaborative learning human experience

internet of beings shared reality collaborative learning human experience

internet of beings shared reality collaborative learning human experience

Plurality