beforeword · English transcription of the sent letter
Intended recipient: Stuart Russell
Author: Kirill Shebetov · beforeword
Sent to: jp@humancompatible.ai
Sending date in the supplied materials: The header shows only “Friday”; the calendar date is not shown.
The sending timezone is not supplied.
Status: shown in the Sent folder; no reply published.
The published materials do not establish receipt or reading by the recipient.
Record: https://beforeword.xyz/letters/researchers/russell/en/#record
Record data: https://beforeword.xyz/letters/researchers/russell/record.json
Russian translation: https://beforeword.xyz/letters/researchers/russell/#letter
Transcribed from author-supplied screenshots. Screen line wraps are joined and overlaps included once; wording and punctuation are retained.
beforeword’s context and links to discussed publications are separate on the letter page.

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Subject: For Stuart Russell: text as evidence of human preferences

Please forward the note below to Professor Stuart Russell.

Dear Professor Russell,

In “Provably Beneficial Artificial Intelligence”, you discuss using “written and filmed information about humans doing things” to build models of human values.

Your discussion already acknowledges that behavior does not always reflect values.

Please indicate a criterion for reading a particular written passage as evidence of a human preference, and the grounds for applying that criterion.

beforeword proposes keeping three elements separately inspectable: the written record, what it is read as showing, and the grounds offered for accepting that reading.

“Human preference” remains part of the writing under examination. The criterion, its written justification, human self-descriptions, and this letter receive the same treatment.

The reading procedure and worked examples:
https://beforeword.xyz/model/en/

Kirill Shebetov
beforeword

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