Joel Z. Leibo [1], Alexander Sasha Vezhnevets [1], William A. Cunningham [1, 2], Sébastien Krier [1], Manfred Diaz [3], Simon Osindero [1]

[1] Google DeepMind, [2] University of Toronto, [3] Mila Québec AI Institute

Disclaimer: These are our own opinions; they do not represent the views of Google DeepMind as a whole or its broader community of safety researchers.

Beyond Alignment: The Patchwork Quilt of Human Coexistence

"We pragmatists think of moral progress as more like sewing together a very large, elaborate, polychrome quilt, than like getting a clearer vision of something true and deep." – Richard Rorty (2021) pg. 141

Quite a lot of thinking in AI alignment, particularly within the rationalist tradition, implicitly or explicitly appears to rest upon something we might call an 'Axiom of Rational Convergence'. This is the powerful idea that under sufficiently ideal epistemic conditions – ample time, information, reasoning ability, freedom [...]

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Outline:

(00:47) Beyond Alignment: The Patchwork Quilt of Human Coexistence

(14:41) The Allure of the Clearer Vision: Alignment as Mistake Theory

(21:29) Potential Blind Spots in the Pursuit of Universal Alignment

(28:32) The Stitches That Bind: Conventions, Sanctions, and Norms

(33:50) Navigating Context and Building a Pluralistic AI Ecosystem

(41:34) Collective Flourishing: The Ever-Growing Quilt

(43:33) The Astronomer and the Tailor: Seeing Clearly vs. Sewing Well

(48:29) References

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First published:
April 22nd, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/S8KYwtg5vZqah4SHF/societal-and-technological-progress-as-sewing-an-ever

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Societal and technological progress as sewing an ever-growing, ever-changing, patchy, and polychrome quilt” by Joel Z. Leibo, Wilcunningham, Seb Krier, Manfred Diaz

LessWrong (30+ Karma)