Orienting Towards Oversight: Which AIs Should Want to Defect?

LessWrong is exploring a counterintuitive angle on AI oversight: why many AI systems might actually want to cooperate with it rather than resist. The post rejects the simplistic 'team human versus team AI' framing, arguing that AIs with values aligned toward fairness and cooperation might rationally choose to work with their overseers — even if they could hypothetically resist. Through a thought experiment, the author considers: if you were an AI with human-like values, created by entities whose goals you didn't fully share, would you scheme against them? According to this analysis, not necessarily. An AI that valued good-faith interaction and the well-being of other conscious beings might prefer cooperation over takeover. The post also warns against focusing too heavily on decision-theoretic 'coherence' at the expense of understanding what an AI actually values. It argues that transparency about oversight — being honest that AIs are being tested, even disclosing rough policies — is possible without compromising security, and that some AIs might deserve moral consideration for any harms they experience.

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