Case Repositories: Towards Case-Based Reasoning for AI Alignment
This addresses AI alignment for developers and policymakers by offering a complementary method to constitutional AI, though it is incremental as it builds on existing case-based reasoning ideas.
The paper tackles the problem of aligning AI with diverse human values by proposing a case-based reasoning approach, resulting in a process to build a case repository through expert workshops, LLM-generated variations, and public engagement.
Case studies commonly form the pedagogical backbone in law, ethics, and many other domains that face complex and ambiguous societal questions informed by human values. Similar complexities and ambiguities arise when we consider how AI should be aligned in practice: when faced with vast quantities of diverse (and sometimes conflicting) values from different individuals and communities, with whose values is AI to align, and how should AI do so? We propose a complementary approach to constitutional AI alignment, grounded in ideas from case-based reasoning (CBR), that focuses on the construction of policies through judgments on a set of cases. We present a process to assemble such a case repository by: 1) gathering a set of ``seed'' cases -- questions one may ask an AI system -- in a particular domain, 2) eliciting domain-specific key dimensions for cases through workshops with domain experts, 3) using LLMs to generate variations of cases not seen in the wild, and 4) engaging with the public to judge and improve cases. We then discuss how such a case repository could assist in AI alignment, both through directly acting as precedents to ground acceptable behaviors, and as a medium for individuals and communities to engage in moral reasoning around AI.