The Science as Sacred

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I think about values a lot. And one potential way I might interpret what you're talking about is when we're taking a lot of actions that are out of alignment with our own intrinsic values. Sometimes we might even know what our values are, and so for something to help us discover them can be helpful. So definitely like that we can knowingly be out of aligned with our values. Also that we can be unknowingly out ofaligned with ourvalues. And also we could have just incoherent, incoate values that you know we need some help in kind of cultivating. In my mind, all those problems could be something potentially that AI eventually could help us with.

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Where does innovation come from? How common is it for "lone wolf" scientists to make large leaps in innovation by themselves? How can we imbue AIs with creativity? Or, conversely, how can we apply advances in AI creativity to our own personal creative processes? How do creative strategies that work well for individuals differ from creative strategies that work well for groups? To what extent are models like DALL-E and ChatGPT "creative"? Can machines love? Or can they only ever pretend to love? We've worried a fair bit about AI misalignment; but what should we do about the fact that so many humans are misaligned with humanity's own interests? What might it mean to be "reverent" towards science?

Joel Lehman is a machine learning researcher interested in algorithmic creativity, AI safety, artificial life, and intersections of AI with psychology and philosophy. Most recently he was a research scientist at OpenAI co-leading the Open-Endedness team (studying algorithms that can innovate endlessly). Previously he was a founding member of Uber AI Labs, first employee of Geometric Intelligence (acquired by Uber), and a tenure track professor at the IT University of Copenhagen. He co-wrote with Kenneth Stanley a popular science book called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned on what AI search algorithms imply for individual and societal accomplishment. Follow him on Twitter at @joelbot3000 or email him at lehman.154@gmail.com.

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