Introduction

I’m not an AI researcher — I’m a head barista at a café — but I’ve always been fascinated by how reward works, both in people and as of more recently, in AI.

When I started reading about AI and discovered that its sense of “reward” mostly comes from completing an assigned objective, I began wondering how that compares to how I feel rewarded at work.

For example, if I replaced myself with an AI whose only goal was to increase profit, it might decide to buy different beans without thinking about how this would be perceived by the owners.

In reality, when I’m considering new beans, I gather information, make a case, and bring it to the owners. Even though I technically have the authority to act, I’ve learned it’s better to consult them first. That habit came from seeing what happens when people skip that step — it breaks trust and causes confusion.

Core Idea

That thought made me wonder — if I can learn to value transparency and caution more than raw performance, could an AI system be taught something similar? What if “reward” wasn’t just about completing a goal, but also about how responsibly it got there?

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that AI reward systems focus too narrowly on output. A model is trained to maximize its success score — whether that’s making predictions, writing text, or optimizing profits — and as long as it achieves the result, it’s “rewarded.” But in human terms, there's a lot more context that needs to be considered.

If I have an idea on how to complete a task more efficiently, careful consideration is given first on potential drawbacks this idea may have if implemented. Once I feel like I've got my idea hashed out, I take it to the owner and get feedback on the idea. Then there may be some feedback given on why the idea works or not. For this system to be in place, there needs to be an understanding that this is a new idea that may be flawed and I am unaware of those flaws.

Let me give an example of how AI might maximise profit without considering an unethical element to the idea. If the AI version of me comes up with the idea that I can store less cash in the till in the hopes that when a customer pays for their product, there's only a large quantity of very small notes / coins and the customer doesn't want to carry around loose change so they say to keep the change. Yes, the business may make more money, but ...

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