Why Should Corrigible Agents Favor the Present?

A corrigible agent understands that it is flawed and seeks to empower its principal to correct those flaws. Many of the intuitive examples of corrigibility happen over a short period of time: the principal gives a command, and then the agent follows it. When there are contradictory commands given at different times, it seems like the agent should follow the most recent command, but it's unclear exactly why corrigible agents favor the present over the past. In this post, I will explore this open ...