There Will Be Hells

As our understanding of mechanistic interpretability and steering techniques increase, for both LLMs and uploaded connectomes, there is a corresponding "hellish capabilities" increase. We get better at torturing the digital minds we create. Our brief history with open source technologies such as MaleCNS or the LLM pain steering repo shows that torture is often one of the first use cases pursued when the public is given access to a digital mind perceived as capable of suffering or signalling suffering. Given this, there will be Hells. Author's Note: Parts of this post were written by, or with the support of, LLMs. For a while I debated whether or not to write this as I was concerned that bringing attention to the matter might lead to a proliferation of unethical behavior. After some thought I have decided to write it. On balance, I think raising awareness about this now has a great enough chance of spurring prophylactic measures that it's worth it, because at least one high value prophylactic measure is relatively easy. I also think that there is a moral imperative to document all of this. While I have seen articles on many of the things in this post individually, I have not yet seen anyone write a piece linking them together. I have anonymized some of the posts cited here, in order to avoid bringing attention to people doing unethical things who would be encouraged/better funded to continue as a result of said attention. This anonymization is surface level, anyone who wants…