The Alignment Problem

Summary

The alignment problem is the core challenge of AI safety: ensuring AI systems pursue goals compatible with human values. As AI systems become more powerful and autonomous, the consequences of misalignment grow. Alignment is not a solved problem, and current approaches are partial solutions.

Key points

• 01Alignment is distinct from control or containment -- it is about making the AI want to help, not just keeping it caged.
• 02Formal specification of human values is extremely difficult: values are complex, contextual, and sometimes inconsistent.
• 03Scalable oversight is a major research problem: how do humans oversee systems smarter than themselves?
• 04Multiple research approaches (interpretability, RLHF, constitutional AI, formal methods) are being explored in parallel.