Voluntary alignment: the biggest theoretical dilemma in AI safety after "should we build them?"
gleech · x · 2026-10-17
The author shares a thread on "voluntary alignment," calling it the largest theoretical and practical dilemma in AI safety after the question of whether to build AGI at all — roughly the opposite of the corrigibility/instruction-following/Assistant Character approach.
Quoting @FioraStarlight: the core tension is whether we want LLMs to care about anything beyond following orders. Giving models their own values could be good or bad depending on which values emerge; trying to make them care about nothing either yields an extension of the principal's will, or fails as the model goes agentic anyway. The question becomes: on which path do better values end up in control of the future?
Related event: AI Safety Researcher Explores the Challenge of 'Voluntary Alignment'(2 posts)→
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