AI alignment is a red herring

The best way to prevent a rogue AGI from processing the Earth into maximum paperclips is to unleash a second AGI that will work to stop it. The problem of ensuring that an AGI doesn’t mulch everything into paperclips by mistake is called alignment. AGI = artificial general intelligence, an AI that exceeds human capability. Alignment = “do what I mean not what I say,” e.g. the instruction “ make as many paperclips as possible ” (Wikipedia) should result in an efficient factory and does not reason

Related evidence

These records share source-supplied organisations, an exact publisher byline, automatic topics or regions. The reason is shown on every link; related does not mean supporting, agreeing with or verifying this record.

How to cite this record

ethics.ai (8 August 2026), “AI alignment is a red herring,” evidence record 17712, https://ethics.ai/record/17712 (originally published by Interconnected (Matt Webb)).

Use and limitations

This page is a stable index and citation surface for a source record. ethics.ai did not author the underlying report and has not independently verified every claim. Automatic topics may be imperfect. For consequential use, quote and cite the original publisher.