Ethical AGI Demands Leadership Unconstrained by Incentive

We all have to stand somewhere — there are no skyhooks, only toeholds.

The paraphrase of philosopher Richard Rorty ‘s words above reveals the perspectival nature of knowledge that makes addressing algorithmic bias in artificial general intelligence (AGI) so challenging; no one has the benefit of an absolute or transcendent starting point. Subsequently, purely technical approaches that frame bias as a fixable system flaw miss the mark. Calls for voluntary socio-technical evaluations examining the contexts surrounding AI are admirable in theory, but have lacked clear, enforceable mechanisms for holding developers accountable.

As Tristan Harris points out, the issue often lies in misaligned incentives. Manifesting ethical AGI demands principled leadership truly decoupled from misaligned incentives that breed bias. : Harris has noted that the writer Upton Sinclair famously stated:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Too often, those involved in AI governance allow their beliefs and epistemology to become mere predictive outputs of the incentive structures they operate within. How many in the rooms where we aim to govern this technology are engaging in thought processes fully independent of careerism, political tribalism, or revenue motives?

Politicians are driven by re-election incentives and toeing the party line. CEOs are beholden to shareholder and growth imperatives. But ethical AI governance requires a “ clean epistemology “ — an unencumbered pursuit of truth about what is safe, just, and beneficial, unsullied by conflicts of interest from either public or private sector dogmas.

We need decision-makers whose judgment and knowledge arise from an understanding of reality unconstrained by entangled incentives that cloud moral reasoning. Only intellectual and ethical integrity insulated from bias-propagating incentive architectures can produce the clear-eyed governance paradigms ethical AGI demands.

In the future, manifesting ethical AGI will require a realignment — a new paradigm where institutional leadership has true accountability to diverse stakeholders, not just shareholders. Those steering the technology must be committed to ceding power, relinquishing unilateral decision-making, and deferring to the lived experiences of marginalized groups. Real leadership means upending existing power structures, redistributing resources equitably, and centering the most vulnerable as equals in defining AI governance.

Ethical AGI cannot emerge from bias-driven incentive structures. It demands moral leadership with the integrity to decouple self-interest from technological development.

Only then can we hope to build AI and AGI that represent and benefit all of humanity, not just a select few who are lucky enough to have access to shaping the code upon which this new “reality” will be built.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.