AI can evolve to feel guilt—but only in certain social environments
Guilt is a highly advantageous quality for society as a whole. It might not prevent initial wrongdoings, but guilt allows humans to judge their own prior judgments as harmful and prevents them from happening again. The internal distress caused by feelings of guilt often—but not always—results in the person taking on some kind of penance to relieve themselves from internal turmoil. This might be something as simple as admitting their wrongdoing to others and taking on a slight stigma of someone who is morally corrupt. This upfront cost might be initially painful, but can relieve further guilt and lead to better cooperation for the group in the future.
Conversational AI is too artificial Nothing is more frustrating than calling a customer support line to be greeted by a monotone, robotic, automated voice. The voice on the other end of the phone is taking painfully long to read you the menu options. You’re two seconds away from either hanging…
The common approach to communicate a large language model’s (LLM) uncertainty is to add a percentage number or a hedging word to its response. But is this all we can do? Instead of generating a single answer and then hedging it, an LLM that is fully transparent to the user…