The Ideal Speech Situation as a Tool for AI Ethical Reflection: A Framework for Alignment

post by kenneth myers (kenneth-myers) · 2024-02-09T18:40:55.881Z · LW · GW · 12 comments

Contents

  ISS Core Principles
  Internalizing the ISS: Ethical Reflection Within AI
  Advantages of the ISS-Driven Approach
  Limitations & Research Pathways
  A Call for Conversation
None
12 comments

Please be merciful, this is my first post. This is a potentially idealistic, but theoretically intriguing conceptual avenue for thinking about aligning AI systems. This is all extremely high level and doesn't propose any kind of concrete solutions. Rather, this is an attempt to reframe the alignment problem in what I think is a novel way. It's with some fear and trembling that I offer this reframing to the LessWrong community.

The challenge of ensuring powerful AI adheres to complex human values often centers on imposing behaviors or pre-programming specific goals. These approaches may miss the dynamic, fundamentally social context in which ethics unfolds. Jürgen Habermas' Ideal Speech Situation (ISS) offers a powerful alternative grounded in communication governed by ethical principles. This concept could revolutionize AI alignment by shifting the focus from external constraint to the emergence of ethical communication capabilities within the AI itself.

ISS Core Principles

The ISS envisions a conversational environment where the most justified outcomes prevail – not via force, but due to reason and the openness of all participants:

• Equal Voice & Opportunity: All parties capable of communication should be free to participate without systematic limitation due to background, knowledge, or status. This poses a core challenge for AI, with its inherent power disparity relative to humans.
• Sincerity & Transparency: Participants aim to express genuine beliefs in ways others can understand. Misdirection, withholding information, or deliberate manipulation erode the possibility of genuine agreement.
• Freedom from Coercion: Arguments must be accepted or rejected based on their inherent strength, not through threats, bribes, or appeals to emotion that bypass rational evaluation.
• Focus on Reasoned Agreement: Instead of seeking pre-programmed 'truths,' the emphasis is on identifying the most defensible position at a given moment through shared evidence and logical justifications others could acknowledge, regardless of initial stance.

Internalizing the ISS: Ethical Reflection Within AI

The most radical shift with this approach is the goal of equipping AI with the tools to critically evaluate itself in this framework:

• Formalizing 'Good Faith': Could an AI discern the difference between its own 'sincere' communication attempts and those intended to mislead? It needs metrics to judge, perhaps imperfectly, its own compliance.
• Evaluating Justifications: Understanding different types of justification (facts, logic, values) is core to human discussion. Could an AI learn to self-evaluate its claims against these standards across varied scenarios?
• Contextual ISS Adaptation: Humans navigate changing social situations fluidly. To be successful, the AI would need to adjust its ISS-optimization in tandem, perhaps relaxing expectations of perfection if urgency, not thorough debate, takes precedence.

Advantages of the ISS-Driven Approach

1. Leveraging LLMs' Language Models: Since large language models (LLMs) glean understanding from vast human texts, they implicitly develop 'value models,' even if imperfect. Aligning LLM actions through continuous aspiration towards ISS guidelines offers a unique advantage.

2. Anticipating Reactions: LLMs may utilize something like 'theory of mind' to model interlocutors' responses. Coupled with ISS, they could then evaluate whether an output would likely be perceived as manipulative, threatening, or harmful.

3. Beyond Mere Safety: While crucial, ethical behavior isn't merely avoiding specific harms. Aligning with ISS could push AI to proactively identify and address ethical concerns by optimizing for good-faith communication.

4. Dynamic, Emergent Alignment: Instead of a fixed rule set, alignment hinges on active negotiation of ISS principles in communication with real users. This mirrors how humans navigate values and expectations.

5. Explainability & Intelligibility: Understanding why an AI acts a certain way is essential for trust. An AI grounded in reasoned principles mimicking human argumentation may allow us to comprehend its decision-making, creating a foundation for genuine partnership.

Limitations & Research Pathways

This requires meticulous interdisciplinary study at the crossroads of philosophy, ethics, and computer science. Challenges include:

• Overcoming Dataset Bias: AI trained on human discussions will internalize both values and biases.
• LLMs As Imperfect Reasoners: LLMs can be misled or misunderstand situations. They won't suddenly become infallible ethical actors.
• Computational Nuance: Formalizing complex concepts like intent, sincerity, and manipulation for machine understanding is exceptionally difficult.

A Call for Conversation

This proposal reframes alignment beyond imposing constraints. It focuses on building AI systems that reason about how they communicate, aspiring towards an ideal based on universally-shared communication ethics. While nascent, this has the potential to equip AI with an internal 'compass' guiding them not just towards task completion, but towards participation in an ongoing ethical dialogue with their human collaborators.

Your continued discussion and input on this proposal are vital to refining both the concept and identifying next steps in what promises to be a complex, multifaceted research project.

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