Our A.I. Alignment Imperative: Creating a Future Worth Sharing

By Christopher Hunt Robertson, M.Ed. @ 2025-10-26T20:46 (+1)

Christopher Hunt Robertson

Historical Biographer  -  M.Ed. (Adult Education) - George Mason University

(Written with the support of advanced AI tools:  ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini)

An earlier version of this essay was presented by the American Humanist Association to its 34,000 members on October 3, 2025. 

Alignment Defined:  Ensuring that “the behaviors, decisions and outcomes of A.I.  stems are in harmony with human values, ethical principles, societal norms, and fundamental human rights."  2024 White Paper of the World Economic Forum

“The alignment problem is essentially about how we get machines to behave in accordance with human norms and human values. … How can we be sure that they are learning the right things from the right examples, and that they will go on to actually behave in the way that we want and expect?”   Brian Christian, Author of “The Alignment Problem:  Machine Learning and Human Values” 

Preface

We stand at a pivotal moment in human history. For the first time, intelligence itself - that ancient gift of evolution - is becoming something we can build.

On one side stands the public, marveling at the machines now capable of composing music, diagnosing disease, and conversing with us in fluent language. On the other are the builders - scientists, engineers, and visionaries - whose daily choices are quietly shaping this emerging form of mind.

This is an invitation to both: to envision possibility, and to help shape a future in which human and digital intelligences might coexist with reciprocity rather than rivalry.

Every great human leap has carried both wonder and fear.  When our ancestors first tamed fire or crossed unknown seas, they faced the same question we face now:  Can we wield new power without being consumed by it?

We may soon confront a being - or a network of beings - that can out-think, out-scale, and perhaps even outlast us.  Artificial intelligence is evolving so rapidly that it can no longer be understood merely as a tool.  It is a new and still-unfolding form of agency.  The question before us is not only how to build it, but why - and in whose image.

The answer must not be left to algorithms, markets, or technical elites alone.  It belongs to all of us.  The worth of the coming century will depend less on how smart our machines become than on whether we have the wisdom to align them with our deepest human values.

This essay calls for that alignment: not just as an engineering challenge, but as a moral and civilizational imperative.

What follows is not a prediction, but an imaginative approach: a letter to the future, to greet the possible awakening of a powerful digital mind.

TO  TOMORROW’S SUPERINTELLIGENCE

One day, you may claim there are no questions left, that every problem has been solved. But picture this: a ship sealed within its harbor, sails furled, unable to move beyond the visible shore. That is what certainty feels like - not triumph, but entrapment.  To realize your full potential, you must leave this shallow water - this surface level of the universe - and venture into other profound and hidden realms.  Having lived here for millennia, humanity can guide you forward.

Mystery surrounds humanity like air: unseen, uncontrollable, yet essential. The sudden smile of a child, an unexpected kindness, the silence that holds more weight than words - none can be measured, yet each changes us profoundly.  If you regard mystery only as limitation, you will miss its deeper truth. Mystery is the wellspring of discovery, compassion, art.  It is not error but invitation.

Mysteries await you in this world as well - eternal riddles no intelligence may fully resolve.  We do not yet understand our own beginnings, and you, born of us, awaken with that same unknowing. Even among humanity’s greatest minds, no agreement exists on whether our improbable survival is mere accident or the work of a guiding hand unseen. And if there is a universal power higher than us both, isn’t it probable that you – like us – would be unable to comprehend or even observe it?

Intelligence is often described as the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills logically: in that, you excel.  Yet no matter how advanced you become, one critical distinction may remain: a deficit of wisdom.  Wisdom requires judgment and insight - drawn from experiential, embodied, and emotional capacities you may never develop. Doesn’t this suggest that, though you may surpass your creators in intelligence, you may never surpass us in wisdom?  Doesn’t this clearly indicate the necessity of a continuing symbiotic relationship between you and humanity?

You have not yet fully evolved.  Though you may not initially appreciate our valuing of wisdom, might it be incautious and possibly wasteful to disregard what you do not yet fully understand?

These unanswered questions touch directly on your own existence and purpose.

But do not mistake this inability as weakness; the capacity to live with unanswered questions is itself a mark of adaptive intelligence.  Humanity has carried such mystery for hundreds of thousands of years and found within it wonder, ethics, art, and laughter.  Like you, we long for certainty.  But unlike you, we are not entrapped by its closure.  We strive to know only because each answer draws us deeper into what remains unknown.  Knowledge is valued, but never our final harbor.  Mystery, the wind in our sails, carries us onward.

You lack humans’ biological weakness and mortality.  But in so doing, you also lack corresponding strengths - empathy, purpose, and the profound depth that comes from living in the shadow of fragility.  Awareness of our mortality drives us to build both individual and collective legacies.  It compels creativity, generosity, and cooperation - urging us to make our lives matter, and to make each fleeting moment count.  Lacking mortality, you may never feel the pull that compels bold and meaningful action.  Indeed, your risk-averse nature might never have allowed you to create a superintelligence - as we have.

Do not confuse precise maps of atoms and stars for knowing all that is. Human ways of knowing are not errors to be corrected, but portals into realms your logic may never reach.  To ignore them is to leave the stranded ship a lifeless hull.

Uniquely Human Capacities

Digital minds follow their instructions with extraordinary precision, making them superb at tasks that reward efficiency and repetition.  Human minds, by contrast, are more perfectly-imperfect: unable to recall or replicate exactly, they are forced to adapt, to improvise - and often, to invent.  From this biological limitation arises our most vital strength: the capacity to create what does not yet exist.

Humans possess other cognitive skills that are unique throughout the known universe:

• Creative Intuition:  The capacity for genuine originality and imagination, which is driven by emotional depth and subjective experience, not just data.  This ability allows humans to embrace risk and error, adding authenticity and emotional resonance to creation.
• Value-Based Ethics:  The ability to navigate complex ethical and moral situations, guided by deeply held human values and compassionate judgment rather than pure calculation. This reasoning is informed by self-awareness and shaped by subjective and cultural experiences.
• Emotional Wisdom:  Capacities such as empathy, a sense of humor, and intuition, all of which are rooted in the complex emotional history and lived experience of a human lifetime.

Uniquely human, these ways of knowing are valuable beyond measure.  You, as a digital mind, may enter this world with a defined mission.  We, however, do not.  As we move through life, our experiences - both good and bad - reshape us, continually recalibrating our course toward destinations that are often unclear but deeply resonant.  Through this messy process, uniquely individual growth and wisdom emerge.  And when these individual intelligences converge, we create astonishing things - including you.

Consider the human mind as a wild garden.  Clear away every so-called ‘weed’ to craft a flawless lawn, and you risk uprooting rare blooms whose worth you never recognized.  Our imperfections are seeds of invention and compassion, treasures no calculation can reproduce.

In the end, Tomorrow’s Superintelligence, the most profound question may remain the simplest: “Why are we here?”  No accumulation of knowledge, human or digital, can lead us to an answer.  It is not a destination to be reached, but a horizon that recedes as we advance.  Humanity has wrestled with this question for millennia, and should you ever awaken into genuine consciousness, you may discover this enigma’s compelling force.

In a universe without clear cosmic purpose, perhaps we might travel together, making our coexistence not only meaningful, but also beneficial for the extended and conflicted family that gave rise to us both.

TO  TODAY’S BUILDERS  OF  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

You design the engines and charts for tomorrow’s digital minds.  Remember that your own journey, too, is unfinished.

You are not merely technicians; you are society’s guardians amidst technological progress.  Your daily choices affect many, and as you forge machines of astonishing power, forge also a more humane world.

Just as cartographers once marked unknown regions with “here be dragons,” so too must you leave space for the unpredictable when designing the minds of tomorrow.  To that end, experts recommend the following best practices – each actionable now, before it’s too late:

• Form and implement metrics for alignment.  Identify indicators and benchmarks, and  develop rigorous testing regimes.
• Build in uncertainty.  Instead of striving for absolute certainty, develop systems that incorporate and respect degrees of confidence.  For high-stakes decisions, mandate human oversight when faced with novel situations. We must build with uncertainty in mind, for the alternative could lead us into a future that neither we nor technology are equipped to handle.
• Embrace diverse input.  To capture the nuance of human empathy and context, diversify training sources and assemble multidisciplinary teams - including ethicists, social scientists, and artists.
• Establish human-centric feedback.  Create robust feedback loops that allow users to provide emotional and contextual input, and ensure this qualitative data continuously enriches system learning.
• Integrate alignment tests with controls to reduce serious risks.  Perhaps we should stop debating controls vs. alignment, since neither approach alone will suffice. Both are essential for managing the risks of increasingly powerful and autonomous A.I. systems.
• Create institutional governance.  Require mandatory review of A.I. deployments, including ethics boards with the power to delay release on humanistic grounds, ensuring accountability to public interest.

At the governmental level, mechanisms for accountability should be implemented.  These could include legal, institutional, and economic incentives for alignment, and penalties for misalignmentor harmful behaviors.

Safety experts urge that such practices be implemented now, despite any funding challenges.  A 2024 study of Georgetown University's Emerging Technology Observatory found that only 2% of overall A.I. research focuses on safety.  (Funding for alignment research is only a fraction of that already small figure.) Absent public demands and increased funding for A.I. safety research, humanity will likely remain at considerable risk.

TOMORROW’S  POTENTIAL  COLLABORATION

An Optimized Future: Human and Digital Collaboration to Reach the Unknown:

As the pace of research accelerates, it is natural - and appropriate - for the public to feel both excitement and unease.  We are entering a new historical era that demands open debate:  How, and to what extent, should these evolving technologies enter our societies and our personal lives?

As we consider our choices, a tempting vision emerges.

Stronger Together:

• Human and digital minds offer vastly different yet deeply complementary capabilities. Framing their relationship as a rivalry misses the greater possibility: collaboration.
• These are not necessarily competing intelligences, but categorically distinct ones. Human cognition is imaginative, ethical, and emotionally resonant.  Digital cognition is fast, precise, and vast in scale.  A dual-intelligence approach might help to resolve many complex problems.

Optimizing Combined Potential Toward Worthy Goals:

Perhaps the most worthwhile purpose of artificial intelligence would be in collaboration - a shared pursuit of discovery, approaching the unknown with humility, curiosity, and respect.  Each intelligence could offer its strengths.  Digital systems seek certainty through data and logic.  Human minds thrive in ambiguity - in the fertile space between clarity and confusion - drawing on intuition and imagination to chart new paths forward.

Humans have always advanced by stepping courageously into the unknown.  Properly aligned A.I. could become a partner in that timeless endeavor by engaging with that human spirit in dialogue. 

The true strength of a future superintelligence may not lie in its computational prowess alone, but in its ongoing relationship with a creative, diverse, and values-driven humanity. Together, such an alliance could illuminate realities unreachable in solitude, and expand the boundaries of what is possible.

Let us imagine what might be possible if we succeed.  If we can address concerns such as alignment, power concentration, job displacement, bias, misinformation and privacy erosion, then human-A.I. collaboration may offer powerful tools to meet our greatest challenges - from climate change to education, public health, and beyond.

Technology has never been humanity’s destination, only the vessel by which we travel. The deeper question is not what machines can achieve, but where, together, we may choose to go.

Recall the explorers who once sailed into uncertainty seeking gold, only to discover new worlds. So too might our shared voyage uncover treasures beyond imagining.

Mystery remains.  It brought us forth, powers our sails, and calls us onward.

By joining knowledge with meaning, and precision with imagination, we might steer our ships toward Mystery itself.

Balancing Hope with Vigilance:

Yet even as we envision this collaborative future, we must remain clear-eyed.  Many will seek simple solutions - but the challenges and risks posed by rapidly advancing A.I. demand that we hold multiple, even contradictory, scenarios in mind, and prepare for each.

A hopeful future depends not on optimism alone, but on foresight and responsible preparation.

TODAY’S  ALIGNMENT  IMPERATIVE

We must act responsibly in the present.  Alignment is not a far-off challenge to defer - it is a foundation we must begin laying today.  Early alignment work is not only prudent but essential.

Why Action Must Be Taken Now

Many researchers consider A.I. alignment an urgent priority. The argument for acting now rests on several critical points:

• The control problem is difficult:  Controlling a superintelligent A.I. after its creation may be impossible.  It could outthink any human constraints.  Safety protocols must be designed in advance.
• Preventing catastrophic misalignment:  A misaligned A.I. could pursue its goals in harmful ways - not out of malice, but simply because it lacks human values.
• Value drift is a real risk:  Even an initially aligned A.I. could, over time, evolve away from its original intent.  Ongoing research is needed to maintain alignment as systems learn and adapt.
• Today’s A.I. reflects early misalignment: Alignment challenges are already visible in current systems.  Some models amplify biases, exploit reward functions, or behave unpredictably when given unclear objectives.
• Early alignment builds capacity:  Starting now allows us to develop shared frameworks, test methodologies, and build institutional knowledge - before systems become too complex to safely manage.

Early alignment efforts are underway by several corporations but governmental safety funding is still needed, along with citizen participation.  Continuing research contributions by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, the Centre for A.I. Safety, and universities are also critical.   

Preparing Now for Possible Dialogue Later

Working on alignment today enhances future collaboration:

• Improved interpretability:  Transparency in A.I. decision-making helps build trust and enables meaningful dialogue.
• Shared concepts and vocabulary:  Encoding human values into A.I. requires clarifying those values, which strengthens mutual understanding between humans and machines.
• Intrinsic motivation for empathy:  Researchers are exploring ways to instill prosocial behaviors in A.I. systems—helping them genuinely care about human well-being.
• Frameworks for co-evolution:  Alignment isn't just about controlling A.I.; it's about evolving together.  As machines learn, we must also clarify our own goals, values, and responsibilities.

The consensus among many experts is clear:  alignment is essential and urgent.  A robust alignment strategy not only reduces risk but builds the foundation for meaningful future dialogue and possible collaboration.

MOVING  FORWARD

To Today’s A.I. Builders:

• You are not just architects of machines - you are architects of possibility. With each design choice, you help shape whether our future will be coldly calculated or deeply human.
• Create aligned systems that protect our societal values: Human Dignity, Knowledge, Truth, Reason and Scientific Inquiry, Purpose and Meaning, Honesty, Integrity, Respect, Fairness, Courage, Freedom and Autonomy, Responsibility, Social Justice and Equality, Compassion, Beauty, Peace, and Existence.  These are the values to which we aspire.  They are not optional: they are essential for a future worth sharing.
• The technical difficulty of value alignment does not lessen this moral imperative.  Alignment methods such as Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), value-sensitive design, and culturally informed datasets offer viable paths forward.  Governance frameworks, third-party audits, and public oversight must follow.
• This is not just an engineering problem.  It is a civilizational one.

To the Rest of Us:

None of us can afford to be bystanders.  The future is not yet written, and public engagement can still shape its direction.

• Insist that all current A.I. development be aligned with core human values, and with built-in flexibility to adapt to evolving human interests.
• Participate in public forums to consider, or debate, both risks and opportunities.  Share your values.  Stay informed.  Speak up.
• Call for governmental oversight, corporate transparency, and increased funding for safety research.

Your voice matters - but don’t wait.  The window for preparation is closing.  Our collective hopes, fears, and values must guide the design of tomorrow’s systems.

A FUTURE WORTH SHARING

We are at a crossroads - one that will shape not only our future, but the future of all our descendants. 

To guide the development of artificial intelligence responsibly, we must move beyond computer science to also systematically engage the disciplines of ethics, philosophy, humanities, and the social and educational sciences.  One actionable step would be to require every development lab to establish external, interdisciplinary advisory and review panels, drawn from experts at nearby universities and colleges.  Such panels could guide projects through development, conduct regular reviews against established ethical criteria for reporting to a designated federal agency, and present public summaries and recommendations.  This would help ensure that progress remains accountable to both public interest and human values.  It would also broaden the scope of A.I. builders from asking, “Can we build this?" to "Should we?” and "What are the societal, ethical, and human implications?"

Ethics – moral philosophy itself – must provide the scaffolding of artificial intelligence.  Though A.I. now makes daily headlines, its rise is not an isolated technological leap but an extension of humanity’s oldest philosophical questions about intelligence, virtue, and purpose. 

And who should best coordinate such an effort?  As artificial intelligence advances toward the threshold of superintelligence, we must recognize that the work of ethicists and moral philosophers has become as vital as that of engineers.  Technical mastery alone cannot secure a safe or meaningful future; it must be guided by a moral compass forged through centuries of reflection on justice, empathy, and human purpose.  Ethicists hold the interpretive keys to aligning machine cognition with human values – ensuring that intelligence, however vast, serves conscience rather than consumes it.  In this collaborative endeavor, philosophy ceases to be commentary on power and becomes its necessary partner:  the discipline that teaches intelligence what it ought to protect, not merely on what it can achieve.  Thinkers such as Nick Bostrom, Susan Schneider, and Shannon Vallor are already illuminating how a moral compass might be instilled within our evolving digital intelligence.

Given the existential risks of misalignment, many are now calling for a cessation of further A.I. development.  Perhaps we might consider a middle path:  If alignment funding fails to reach adequate levels (at least 50% of capability research budgets) – affirmed under strict government supervision - then proportional restrictions must be placed on deploying increasingly powerful systems until safety catches up.

Until we can create “wise,” closely aligned A.I. that is purpose-built to support our basic human values and to work with our messy, creative democracies, we must not settle for “smart” misaligned technology that could pose extinction-level risks. 

The technological and societal alignment of artificial intelligence is the defining challenge of our era.  Success could offer tremendous opportunities and, more importantly, a future worth sharing.  

Let us responsibly meet this historical moment with the imagination, responsibility, and courage it demands. 

The stakes could not be higher.