#76 – Joe Carlsmith on Scheming AI

Joe Carlsmith is a writer, researcher, and philosopher. He works as a senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy, where he focuses on existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence. He also writes independently about various topics in philosophy and futurism, and holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford.
You can find links and a transcript at www.hearthisidea.com/episodes/carlsmith
In this episode we talked about a report Joe recently authored, titled ‘Scheming AIs: Will AIs fake alignment during training in order to get power?’. The report “examines whether advanced AIs that perform well in training will be doing so in order to gain power later”; a behaviour Carlsmith calls scheming.
We talk about:

Distinguishing ways AI systems can be deceptive and misaligned
Why powerful AI systems might acquire goals that go beyond what they’re trained to do, and how those goals could lead to scheming
Why scheming goals might perform better (or worse) in training than less worrying goals
The ‘counting argument’ for scheming AI
Why goals that lead to scheming might be simpler than the goals we intend
Things Joe is still confused about, and research project ideas

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