Augmented Utilitarianism for AGI Safety

In the light of ongoing progresses of research on artificial intelligent systems exhibiting a steadily increasing problem-solving ability, the identification of practicable solutions to the value alignment problem in AGI Safety is becoming a matter of urgency. In this context, one preeminent challenge that has been addressed by multiple researchers is the adequate formulation of utility functions or equivalents reliably capturing human ethical conceptions. However, the specification of suitable utility functions harbors the risk of “perverse instantiation” for which no final consensus on responsible proactive countermeasures has been achieved so far. Amidst this background, we propose a novel non-normative socio-technological ethical framework denoted Augmented Utilitarianism which directly alleviates the perverse instantiation problem. We elaborate on how augmented by AI and more generally science and technology, it might allow a society to craft and update ethical utility functions while jointly undergoing a dynamical ethical enhancement. Further, we elucidate the need to consider embodied simulations in the design of utility functions for AGIs aligned with human values. Finally, we discuss future prospects regarding the usage of the presented scientifically grounded ethical framework and mention possible challenges.