Advanced · Safety

AI Alignment

Visual diagram · (in preparation) · Math · (in preparation) · Worked example · 3 difficulty levels.

TL;DR. The research field aimed at making AI systems pursue the goals their developers and users actually intend.

Technical Definition

The research field aimed at making AI systems pursue the goals their developers and users actually intend.

How it works

Alignment spans technical work (RLHF, constitutional AI, interpretability) and conceptual work (specifying human values, scalable oversight). As models grow more capable, the cost of misalignment grows; alignment is widely seen as one of the defining problems of this decade.

Related Concepts

• RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback) — A technique that aligns LLM outputs with human preferences by training a reward model from human comparisons.
• Explainability (XAI) — Techniques making AI decisions understandable to humans, crucial for trust and regulatory compliance.
• AI Safety & Alignment — The field ensuring AI systems behave as intended, remain under human control, and avoid unintended harm.