OpenAI announced the formation of a specialized Superalignment team with the objective of preventing the emergence of rogue Superintelligent AI. OpenAI highlighted the need to align AI systems with human values and emphasized the importance of proactive measures to prevent potential harm.
The process of creating AI systems that are in line with human ideals and objectives is known as AI alignment. It entails making sure AI systems comprehend ethical concepts, society standards, and human objectives and behave accordingly. AI alignment aims to close the gap between human needs and well-being and the goals of AI systems. AI hazards can be reduced and its potential advantages can be increased by combining it with human values.
OpenAI’s Superalignment team will concentrate on advancing the understanding and implementation of alignment, the process of ensuring AI systems act in accordance with human values and goals. By investigating robust alignment methods and developing new techniques, the team aims to create AI systems that remain beneficial and aligned throughout their development.
Our goal is to solve the core technical challenges of superintelligence alignment in four years, says OpenAI.
According to Ilya Sutsker, OpenAI’s co-founder and chief scientist, and Jan Leike, the head of alignment, the existing AI alignment techniques utilized in models like GPT-4, which powers ChatGPT, depend on reinforcement learning from human feedback. However, this approach relies on human supervision, which may not be feasible if the AI surpasses human intelligence and can outsmart its overseers. Sutsker and Leike further explained that additional assumptions, such as favorable generalization properties during deployment or the models' inability to detect and undermine supervision during training, could also potentially break down in the future.
The field of AI safety is anticipated to emerge as a significant industry in its own regard. Governments around the world are taking steps to establish regulations that address various aspects of AI, including data privacy, algorithmic transparency, and ethical considerations. The European Union is working on a comprehensive Artificial Intelligence Act, while the United States is also taking measures to develop a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. In the UK, the Foundation Model AI Taskforce has been established to investigate AI safety concerns.