LLMs lack human-like metacognitive skills for error-catching and cognition management. Enhancing these could cut slop, sycophancy, and aid alignment research. Benefits for alignment may outweigh capability risks.
Key Points
- 1.Metacognition as key to human intelligence gap
- 2.Reduces errors, stabilizes alignment
- 3.Overlooked due to automatization in humans
Impact Analysis
Improves LLM reliability for alignment work, potentially averting doom from slop over scheming. Enables better collaboration on conceptual alignment problems.
Technical Details
Involves uncertainty-detecting neural mechanisms and explicit strategies. Similar signals already in LLMs; training could automatize them.