This essay is one of the awarded essays for the Econ Theory AI Alignment Prize from Superlinear. The essay uses the tools of theoretical economics to contribute to the AI alignment problem.

Psychologists are familiar with the notion of cognitive dissonance, the discomfort when a person’s behavior conflicts with that person’s beliefs and preferences. Cognitive dissonance is accompanied with seemingly irrational behavior such as motivated reasoning and self-deception. It is basically an example of misalignment: decisions are not aligned with values. In that sense, perhaps cognitive dissonance can shed some light on the AI-alignment problem (Bostrom, 2014): how to create safe artificial intelligence that does things that we (creators, humans, sentient beings) really want? How can the decisions of AI-machines become aligned with our values and preferences? Even a small misalignment between our values and the goals of superintelligent machines (that are more intelligent and hence powerful than us) could cause very serious problems. And we will never be intelligent enough to solve those problems once the misaligned machines are more intelligent than us.

Computer scientists who study the AI-alignment problem speak a different language than psychologists who study cognitive dissonance. But new studies in behavioral economics, especially some new theoretical models about cognitive dissonance (Hestermann, Le Yaouanq & Treich, 2020), can perhaps bridge this gap between computer scientists and psychologists. The language of economists, when they speak of e.g. utility functions, optimization, expected value maximization, game-theoretic strategic behavior and Bayesian updating, is closer to the language of computer scientists who develop AI.

The cognitive dissonance models in behavioral economics are well illustrated by the meat paradox (Hestermann, Le Yaouanq & Treich, 2020): many people are animal-loving meat eaters, and their high levels of meat consumption are not aligned with their concern for animal welfare. They do not want to cause unnecessary animal suffering, but they know that meat consumption involves unnecessary suffering when there are alternatives (e.g. plant-based meat) that cause less or no suffering. When those people do not switch to a meat-free diet, they start rationalizing their meat consumption, denying a mind to farm animals (Basti...

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