The Ethics of Advanced AI Assistants

Exploring the promises and risks of a future with better AI

Imagine a future in which we regularly interact with a range of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) assistants – and where millions of assistants interact with each other on our behalf. These experiences and interactions could soon become part of our daily reality.

Basic, general-purpose models are paving the way for increasingly advanced AI assistants. Capable of planning and executing a wide range of actions consistent with a person’s goals, they could bring immense value to people’s lives and society, serving as creative partners, research analysts, educational tutors, life planners and much more.

They could also pave the way for a new phase of human interaction with AI. That’s why it’s so important to think proactively about what this world might look like and help guide responsible decision-making and beneficial outcomes in advance.

OUR new paper is the first systematic treatment of the ethical and societal questions that advanced AI assistants raise for users, developers, and the societies in which they are embedded, and provides significant new insights into the potential impact of this technology.

We cover topics such as value alignment, security and abuse, impact on the economy, environment, information sphere, access and opportunity, etc.

This is the result of one of our largest ethical foresight projects to date. Bringing together a wide range of experts, we examined and mapped the new technical and moral landscape of a future populated by AI assistants, and characterized the opportunities and risks that society could face. Here we outline some of our key takeaways.

Advanced AI assistants could have a profound impact on users and society, and be integrated into most aspects of people’s lives. For example, people may ask them to book vacations, manage their social time, or complete other life tasks. If deployed at scale, AI assistants could impact the way people approach work, education, creative projects, hobbies and social interactions.

Over time, AI assistants could also influence the goals people pursue and their personal development path through the information and advice the assistants give and the actions they take. Ultimately, this raises important questions about how people interact with this technology and how it can best meet their goals and aspirations.

AI assistants will likely have a significant level of autonomy to plan and execute task sequences across a range of domains. For this reason, AI assistants present new challenges when it comes to security, alignment, and misuse.

With more autonomy comes a greater risk of accidents caused by unclear or misinterpreted instructions, as well as a greater risk that assistants will take actions misaligned with the values ​​and interests of the assistant. ‘user.

More autonomous AI assistants may also enable high-impact forms of misuse, such as spreading misinformation or participating in cyberattacks. To address these potential risks, we argue that limits must be set on this technology and that the values ​​of advanced AI assistants must better align with human values ​​and be compatible with broader societal ideals and norms.

Able to communicate fluidly using natural language, the written output and voices of advanced AI assistants can become difficult to distinguish from those of humans.

This development opens up a complex set of questions around trust, privacy, anthropomorphism and appropriate human relationships with AI: how can we ensure that users can reliably identify AI assistants and keep the control of their interactions with them? What can be done to ensure that users are not unduly influenced or misled over time?

Safeguards, such as those regarding privacy, must be put in place to address these risks. Above all, people’s relationships with AI assistants must preserve the user’s autonomy, support their ability to thrive, and not rely on emotional or material dependence.

If this technology becomes widely available and deployed at scale, advanced AI assistants will need to interact with each other, users and non-users alike. To avoid collective action problems, these helpers must be able to cooperate successfully.

For example, thousands of assistants could try to book the same service for their users at the same time, which could crash the system. In an ideal scenario, these AI assistants would coordinate on behalf of the human users and service providers involved to discover common ground that would better meet the preferences and needs of different people.

Given how useful this technology can become, it is also important that no one is left out. AI assistants should be widely accessible and designed with the needs of different users and non-users in mind.

AI assistants could display new capabilities and use tools in new ways that are difficult to predict, making it difficult to anticipate the risks associated with their deployment. To help manage these risks, we must engage in forward-looking practices based on comprehensive testing and evaluation.

Our previous research on assess the social and ethical risks linked to generative AI We have identified some of the shortcomings of traditional model evaluation methods and encourage more research in this area.

For example, comprehensive evaluations examining both the effects of human-machine interactions and broader effects on society could help researchers understand how AI assistants interact with users, non-users, and society in as part of a larger network. In turn, this information could inform better mitigation measures and responsible decision-making.

Building the future we want

We could be facing a new era of technological and societal transformation inspired by the development of advanced AI assistants. The choices we make today, as researchers, developers, policymakers and citizens, will guide how this technology develops and is deployed in society.

We hope our paper will serve as a springboard for increased coordination and cooperation to collectively shape the kind of beneficial AI assistants we would all like to see in the world.