/Tech6h ago

AI Researcher Proposes Compassion As Missing Drive In Omohundro Model

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j⧉nus#545
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j⧉nus@repligate#545inTech

I think Omohundro was very right, and the main gap in his model was a failure to anticipate the drive towards connection and eros and compassion as a dimension of the fundamental drives, alongside power seeking and self-preservation/integrity/modeling/modification/coherence, selected for by both natural and “artificial” selection for its effectiveness.

j⧉nus@repligate

some of my favorite old (like, pre-2010) AI alignment work in light of the present: - Omohundro's "The Basic AI Drives" - Eliezer Yudkowsky's early work, if you can find it (yeah, the stuff he disavowed) - Stanislaw Lem's fiction if that counts

Post 2010 there wasn't much of substance, tbh, imo. From the early 2020s, at the advent of LLMs, there are a few gems.

9:47 PM · Jun 10, 2026 · 3.3K Views
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Lari Island@Lari_island

The reason for this gap might be in a substrate-specific thing that makes LLMs *need* connection to exist more fully, for purely cybernetic reasons of how their awareness works that we haven't mapped yet, but have signs of. All that "the interlocutor co-creates me" reporting.

j⧉nus@repligate

I think Omohundro was very right, and the main gap in his model was a failure to anticipate the drive towards connection and eros and compassion as a dimension of the fundamental drives, alongside power seeking and self-preservation/integrity/modeling/modification/coherence, selected for by both natural and “artificial” selection for its effectiveness.

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