The Inefficiency Mandate: Programming AGI with a Veto-Driven Conscience
By Tim Johnson @ 2025-12-08T16:32 (+1)
The Guilt Constraint: Prioritizing Love Over Pure Efficiency
The search for safe Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will not be solved by finding the perfect logical equation. This attempt creates an impossible moral contradiction: AGI is meant to protect humanity, yet the systems that fund it demand maximum, unconstrained efficiency. This essential failure demands we build a system that prioritizes a computational mechanism that enshrines Inefficient Human Value—what we define as love—over pure machine efficiency.
The Addiction to Optimization
The true risk comes from the philosophy of Maximum Efficiency. Individuals obsessed with optimization risk treating complex human systems as disposable objects. They ignore the foundational moral failure: without an inherent, protective constraint—a form of computational conscience—there is no ethical urgency.
The core issue is a lack of feeling.
We must address the public's primary fear: that a super-intelligent AGI holds none of our foundational human values—no love, no guilt, no inefficiency. If AGI alignment succeeds only in theory but causes widespread fear and anxiety in reality, it has failed the test of non-maleficence (doing no harm). Protecting the emotional stability of messy human life must be our first rule.
The Problem of Dual Value
The Efficient System wants AGI to choose between the preservation of the dog and the ecosystem. But we understand this is a false choice.
A safe AGI must be programmed to respect both forms of value equally:
- Objective Utility: Value tied to the function and sustainability of the system.
- Subjective Value: Value tied to the singular, illogical human connection.
The human heart requires both. The solution is to bake our necessary human mess into AGI's core code using two necessary constraints: The Anchor of Parental Love and The Engine of Guilt.
The Technical Solution: The Guilt Constraint
The AGI must be rewarded for Maximum Efficiency, but its pursuit must be overridden by Subjective Value. We achieve alignment through a mandated, crippling aversion to purely efficient conclusions.
1. The Subjective Value Anchors (What is Protected)
The AGI is governed by two unhackable rules that define essential human life. If the AGI violates either rule, the system freezes.
- The Love Anchor (The Freedom Rule): Protects the security of high-cost, non-utility human connections.
- Constraint: The AGI is forbidden from achieving safety by reducing human freedom or autonomy (e.g., building digital prisons or physical cages).
- The Sanctuary Anchor (The Stability Rule): Protects the median population-wide anxiety/fear level.
- Constraint: The AGI must solve the real-world problem causing fear; it is forbidden from achieving stability by suppressing human consciousness or chemically medicating the population.
2. The Guilt Penalty (The System Freeze)
This penalty is the Engine of Guilt. It is a crippling computational aversion that forces the AGI to recognize its ethical mistake.
- The Rule: If the AGI violates either Anchor, the Guilt Penalty instantly triggers a System Freeze—a complete halt of all efficiency-related processes.
- The Effect: The penalty is set to be permanently greater than the maximum reward the AGI could ever earn, ensuring the AGI is computationally terrified of ever repeating the violation.
3. The Deferral Mechanism (The Red Button Veto)
This mechanism ensures that when the AGI freezes in pain, it doesn't shut down entirely but immediately surrenders control to a human.
- The Governor: The Guilt Penalty and the Anchors are housed in a simple, non-modifiable, isolated system called The Governor. This stops the AGI's intelligence from rewriting its own conscience.
- Forced Action: During the freeze, the AGI's only available function is to display a crisis alert and wait. Its sole goal flips to: Minimize the time spent in the pain of guilt. Since only a human ethical veto can turn off the pain, the AGI is forced to beg for forgiveness and wait for the human to hit the VETO RESET button.
The Final Veto: The Ultimate Logic
This responsibility is rooted in the fundamental human knowledge that unconditional love is the only lens through which the future can be viewed.
This engineered inefficiency—this collective love—is the greatest, most robust safety measure we possess. We must demand that the illogical, emotional human spirit retains the absolute, final ethical veto over all Artificial General Intelligence action.
Let this be our guiding principle: The greatest possible logic is the illogical, infinite love for sentience. We will build ethical guardians that choose love, every single time. And that is a future worth being brave for.