Structures and Institutional Design
HMIA 2025
Class Title
HMIA 2025
"Readings"
Video: x [3m21s]
Activity: TBD
PRE-CLASS
CLASS
Outline
- GIST: Structural and institutional design refers to things that distribute, constrain, and audit power. Rooted in a long tradition of political and institutional design, these mechanisms treat power as natural and inherently fallible and alignment as structurally fragile. Their goal is not to make agents more virtuous or governable or to specify acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, but to make systems of agents alignable even when agents fail. By embedding guardrails against capture, drift, and corruption, these structural patterns preserve the conditions for accountable, resilient behavior.
HMIA 2025
HMIA 2025
PRE-CLASS
Video: Linked Title [3m21s]
HMIA 2025
PRE-CLASS
HMIA 2025
PRE-CLASS
HMIA 2025
PRE-CLASS
We Need to Get Organized
HMIA 2025
CLASS
HMIA 2025
CLASS
At least some of class a serious discussion of Federalist 51.
Madison explains and defends the checks and balances system. Each branch of government is framed so that its power checks the power of the other two branches and each branch of government is dependent on the people, who are the source of legitimate authority. Madison also shows how republican government can serve as a check on the power of factions, and the tyranny of the majority. Checks and balances preserve liberty by ensuring justice: “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.” Madison’s political theory here shows the influence of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws.
What connections can we make to machine alignment?
HMIA 2025
Resources
Alexander Hamilton Federalist 51 (online National Archives) (short excerpt)
Williams J 2018 "Elinor Ostrom’s 8 rules for managing the commons" (blog post)
Ostrom E 1990 Governing the Commons (PDF) see chapter 1
Ostrom E 1990 Nobel Prize Address
Lessig, L 2000 "Code is Law" (Harvard Magazine)
Olson M 1965 The Logic of Collective Action (short excerpt from chapter 1)
Bai et al 2022 Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedback
Hannah Arendt – On Revolution, Chapter 5: “The Revolutionary Tradition and Its Lost Treasure” (in aPDF4DJR - needs to be processed if used)
Wikipedia Governance (2002)