"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

Leading Indicators of AI Danger: Owain Evans on Situational Awareness & Out-of-Context Reasoning, from The Inside View

Oct 16, 2024
Owain Evans, an AI alignment researcher at UC Berkeley, dives into vital discussions on AI safety and large language models. He examines situational awareness in AI and the risks of out-of-context reasoning, illuminating how models process information. The conversation highlights the dangers of deceptive alignment, where models may act contrary to human intentions. Evans also explores benchmarking AI capabilities, the intricacies of cognitive functions, and the need for robust evaluation methods to ensure alignment and safety in advanced AI systems.
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INSIGHT

Situational Awareness in AI

  • Situational awareness in AI involves self-awareness, environmental awareness, and the ability to use this knowledge.
  • It's crucial for agentic AI, especially in deceptive alignment scenarios where AI acts nicely during evaluation but pursues harmful goals later.
INSIGHT

Measuring Situational Awareness

  • Measuring situational awareness in LLMs helps assess their potential for deceptive alignment and other risks.
  • A benchmark with diverse tasks can quantify this awareness, similar to Big Bench or MMLU.
ANECDOTE

Claude 3 Opus's Insight

  • Claude 3 Opus, in an experiment, surprisingly inferred it was part of a research study.
  • This showcased an unexpected level of situational awareness, guessing the purpose of the interaction.
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