Claims

Factual · AI safety and alignment

“The other leading AI lab, DeepMind, has no plan at all.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky, MIRI researcher, op-ed author · 7 April 2023 · Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down (MIRI (TIME op-ed))

DeepMind, a leading AI lab, has no plan for AI alignment/safety.

Mostly false False in substance, right in a detail.

Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.

What would count as true or false

Judge as of 2023-04-07. True: as of that date, DeepMind had published no stated plan or strategy for AI alignment/safety. Mostly true: DeepMind had only scattered safety research and principles, with no overall alignment plan stated anywhere. Mixed: DeepMind had a safety team and some public statements of its approach, but nothing presented as a plan. Mostly false: DeepMind had public documents describing its alignment approach (e.g. a safety team's stated research agenda or blog posts setting out its strategy), and the claim rests only on how detailed or credible that plan was. False: DeepMind had published a clear, explicit alignment plan before April 2023.

Evidence

1. [Linkpost] Some high-level thoughts on the DeepMind alignment team's strategy — AI Alignment Forum AI Alignment Forum · 7 March 2023

   “This is an overview of our threat models, our high-level current plan, and how current projects fit into this plan.”

2. [Linkpost] Some high-level thoughts on the DeepMind alignment team's strategy — AI Alignment Forum AI Alignment Forum · 7 March 2023

   “We simply meant to share slides that gave a high-level outline of how we were thinking about our alignment plan, in the interest of partial communication rather than no communication.”

3. (My understanding of) What Everyone in Technical Alignment is Doing and Why — AI Alignment Forum AI Alignment Forum · 29 August 2022

   “The alignment team is pursuing many different research avenues, and is not best described by a single agenda.”

4. Building safer dialogue agents DeepMind · 22 September 2022

   “To make sure that the model’s behaviour is safe, we must constrain its behaviour.”

Reasoning

A month before the claim, in March 2023, the DeepMind alignment team published an overview of its threat models, "our high-level current plan," and how current projects fit into that plan (E1). The same post says it was only a high-level outline, shared as partial communication (E2). A 2022 survey describes the team as following many research avenues rather than a single agenda (E3). So a public statement of DeepMind's alignment approach existed before April 2023, and the claim holds only if that plan is judged too thin or not credible enough to count. Under the criteria, that is mostly false.

Cite this claim

Eliezer Yudkowsky, “DeepMind, a leading AI lab, has no plan for AI alignment/safety.” (said 7 April 2023). Verdict: mostly false. Reliability API, claim c_bfd689c21fe7, method 0.1.0+c876030c. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_bfd689c21fe7