Taming AI with Satire: A Guide to Ethical Alignment
▼ Summary
– CAAAC is a satirical organization that parodies the AI alignment field by presenting itself as a center to coordinate alignment researchers.
– The group’s website initially appears legitimate but reveals itself as a joke through hidden messages like the word “bullshit” appearing in its design.
– It was created by the same team behind The Box, a physical product designed to protect women from AI-generated deepfakes on dates.
– CAAAC mocks the trend of focusing on theoretical risks like AI takeover instead of real-world issues such as bias, energy use, and job displacement.
– The website includes absurd recruitment tactics, like requiring belief in imminent human annihilation and featuring a Rick Astley rickroll for certain job applications.
The complex challenge of ensuring artificial intelligence adheres to human values, a discipline known as AI alignment, has evolved into a distinct and often abstract field filled with policy documents and competitive benchmarks. Yet a provocative new initiative is now questioning who, exactly, is keeping the alignment experts themselves in check.
Meet the Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers, or CAAAC, an organization that claims to unify thousands of AI alignment researchers into what it grandly terms “one final AI center singularity.” At first glance, the group appears entirely legitimate. Its website features a sleek, minimalist design with converging arrows and subtle parallel lines that suggest harmony and collaboration.
But linger just a moment longer, and the elegant swirls resolve into the word “bullshit”, revealing the entire project as an elaborate satire. Those who explore further will discover cleverly hidden jokes woven into every section of the fictional center’s online presence.
CAAAC debuted this week from the creative minds behind The Box, a physical device designed to shield women from having their images stolen and manipulated into AI deepfakes. In a characteristically deadpan statement to The Verge, cofounder Louis Barclay declared, “This website is the most important thing that anyone will read about AI in this millenium or the next.” A second founder, Barclay noted, preferred to remain anonymous.
The parody is so convincingly crafted that even seasoned professionals were initially fooled. Machine learning researcher and technology attorney Kendra Albert admitted she first believed CAAAC was a genuine effort. Albert observes that the site lampoons a troubling tendency within the AI safety community: a shift away from addressing concrete, present-day issues, like algorithmic bias, energy consumption, or workforce displacement, and toward abstract, far-fetched fears of a machine-led apocalypse.
To resolve what it dubs the “AI alignment alignment crisis,” CAAAC announces it will recruit its global team exclusively from the Bay Area. The jobs page cheekily specifies that applicants need only believe that “AGI will annihilate all humans in the next six months.” Those eager to join are instructed to simply comment on a LinkedIn post to automatically become a fellow, and are advised to bring their own wet gear.
Aspiring applicants for the “AI Alignment Alignment Alignment Researcher” role who click through the site’s labyrinthine links are eventually treated to an unexpected serenade: Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” For the truly ambitious, CAAAC even offers a generative AI tool to create a personalized AI center, complete with an executive director, in under a minute and with zero technical knowledge required.
(Source: The Verge)
