Value learning is a proposed method for incorporating human values in an AGI. It involves the creation of an artificial learner whose actions consider many possible sets of values and preferences, weighed by their likelihood. Value learning could prevent an AGI of having goals detrimental to human values, hence helping in the creation of Friendly AI.
There are many proposed ways to incorporate human values in an AGI (e.g.: Coherent Extrapolated Volition, Coherent Aggregated Volition and Coherent Blended Volition, mostly dating from 2004-2010.) This method was suggested in 2011in Daniel Dewey’s paper ‘Learning What to Value’. Like most authors, he assumes that an artificial agent needs to be intentionally aligned to human goals. First, Dewey argues against the use of a simple use of reinforcement learning to solve this problem, on the basis that this lead to the maximization of specific rewards that can diverge from value maximization. For example, this could suffer from goal misspecification or reward hacking.
Dewey proposes a utility function maximizer, who considers all possible utility functions weighted by their Bayesian probabilities: "[W]e propose uncertainty over utility functions. Instead of providing an agent one utility function up front, we provide an agent with a pool of possible utility functions and a probability distribution P such that each utility function can be assigned probability P(Ujyxm) given a particular interaction history [yxm]. An agent can then calculate an expected value over possible utility functions given a particular interaction history"...