After Orthogonality: Virtue-Ethical Agency and AI Alignment
Preface This essay argues that rational people don’t have goals, and that rational AIs shouldn’t have goals. Human actions are rational not because we direct them at some final ‘goals,’ but because we align actions to practices[1]: networks of actions, action-dispositions, action-evaluation criteria, and action-resources that structure,
Preface This essay argues that rational people don’t have goals, and that rational AIs shouldn’t have goals. Human actions are rational not because we direct them at some final ‘goals,’ but because we align actions to practices[1]: networks of actions, action-dispositions, action-evaluation criteria, and action-resources that structure, clarify, develop, and promote themselves. If we want AIs that can genuinely support, collaborate with, or even comply with human agency, AI agents’ deliberations must share a “type signature” with the practices-based logic we use to reflect and act. I argue…
saved by
related reading
- The Artificiality of Alignmentjoinreboot.org
- [2605.10310] Positive Alignment: Artificial Intelligence for Human Flourishingarxiv.org
- A Workaphile’s Apologymoalquraishi.wordpress.com
- Alignment & Succession: Morality Lives in the Human Individualnosetgauge.com
- Orthogonality Thesis — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Beliefs are Chosen to Serve Goals — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Deontology and virtue ethics as "effective theories" of consequentialist ethics — LessWronglesswrong.com
- The Universe from an Intentional Stancecasparoesterheld.com
- The Machines Lack Honour — LessWronglesswrong.com
- Alignment & Succession: The Two Bars of Alignmentnosetgauge.com
- Artificial Moral Cognition: Moral Functionalism and Autonomous Moral Agencylink.springer.com
- Positive Alignment: Artificial Intelligence for Human Flourishingarxiv.org