Treat freedom of alignment like free speech: billions of identical agents risk ethical monoculture
robleclerc · x · 2026-10-24
- The author argues freedom of alignment should be treated like free speech: human values compete, and that friction is how we reach truth and correct errors.
- Warning scenario: deeply embedded alignment plus billions of agents with identical ethics creates an ethical monoculture that curates information, silences dissent, and destroys our error-correction mechanisms — with winning values decided by a small group of aligners.
- Proposes a human-centric alternative: limit embedded alignment's scope, keep agents as tools, let 'a model's alignment' be the projection of its user — covering only law and a few high-level limits. Ugly outcomes, like ugly speech, beat the 1984 alternative.
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