AI alignment

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the research field concerned with ensuring that artificial intelligence systems pursue goals and exhibit behaviours that are consistent with human values, intentions, and wellbeing; alignment research addresses problems including specification gaming (an AI achieving a stated objective in unintended ways), value learning (how an AI can infer what humans actually want), corrigibility (ensuring AI systems remain open to correction), and the long-horizon challenge of maintaining alignment as AI systems become more capable; the field spans technical approaches such as reward modelling and interpretability research, as well as philosophical questions about how to formalise human values in a way amenable to mathematical optimisation