{"id":2286,"date":"2026-09-15T16:53:48","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T20:53:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/?p=2286"},"modified":"2026-09-16T00:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T04:13:08","slug":"ai-alignment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2026\/09\/15\/ai-alignment\/","title":{"rendered":"AI alignment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">AI alignment is the project of making AI so that it won&#8217;t kill us or sell us out. A na\u00efve conception adds a constitution or statement of principles, basically one more document to start the prompt for an LLM&#8217;s linguistic riffing. That makes the mistake of thinking that the danger is <em>superintelligent<\/em> or <em>rogue<\/em> AI, as if the AI are people who need to be raised to know the difference between right and wrong. The real danger is systems people don&#8217;t understand (used carelessly) or systems that people do understand (used maliciously). Like all problems of technology, it is a social problem that is simultaneously about people and about machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But really this post is just an excuse for the meme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chartcreate-alignment.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"840\" height=\"807\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chartcreate-alignment.jpg?resize=840%2C807&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"An AI alignment chart. Arranged in a 3x3 grid, after the fashion of the D&amp;D Alignment meme.\nLawful Good: Commander Data (from Star Trek, played by Brent Spiner)\nLawful Neutral: Gort (from The Day The Earth Stood Still)\nLawful Evil: HAL 9000 (from 2001)\nNeutral Good: K9 (from Doctor Who)\nNeutral: the robot bartender (from Passengers, played by Michael Sheen)\nNeutral Evil: Caine (from The Amazing Digital Circus)\nChaotic Good: Poe (from Altered Carbon, played by Chris Conner)\nChaotic Neutral: Bender (from Futurama)\nChaotic Evil: Lore (from Star Trek, played by Brent Spiner)\" class=\"wp-image-2285\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chartcreate-alignment.jpg?resize=1024%2C984&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chartcreate-alignment.jpg?resize=300%2C288&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chartcreate-alignment.jpg?resize=768%2C738&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chartcreate-alignment.jpg?resize=1536%2C1476&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chartcreate-alignment.jpg?resize=2048%2C1968&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chartcreate-alignment.jpg?resize=1200%2C1153&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/chartcreate-alignment.jpg?w=1680&amp;ssl=1 1680w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">AI Alignment chart<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AI alignment is the project of making AI so that it won&#8217;t kill us or sell us out. A na\u00efve conception adds a constitution or statement of principles, basically one more document to start the prompt for an LLM&#8217;s linguistic riffing. That makes the mistake of thinking that the danger is superintelligent or rogue AI, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2026\/09\/15\/ai-alignment\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;AI alignment&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-2286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","tag-ai"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7PjAo-AS","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2286"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2289,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2286\/revisions\/2289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}