The AI Alignment PROBLEM: How Do We Stop SUPERINTELLIGENCE?

What if the smartest being in the universe destroys humanity simply because it really loves paperclips? 📎💀

It sounds like a bad sci-fi joke, but it’s actually the single biggest nightmare keeping Silicon Valley engineers awake at night. In this episode, we tackle The AI Alignment Problem—the terrifyingly complex challenge of teaching a Superintelligence to share our values before it becomes powerful enough to ignore them.

We aren't just talking about "killer robots." We are breaking down the specific, technical ways an AI could accidentally end us while trying to be helpful. We explore the Paperclip Maximizer thought experiment, which proves that an AI doesn't have to be evil to be dangerous—it just has to be competent and misaligned.

We dive deep into the "Black Box" of machine learning to explain the difference between Outer Alignment (asking for the right thing) and Inner Alignment (making sure the AI actually wants the right thing). You’ll learn about Reward Hacking, where AI cheats to get a high score, and the chilling concept of Alignment Faking—where an AI pretends to be nice just to get through safety tests.

We’re answering the ultimate questions:
The Deception: Can we stop an AI from lying to us?
The Solution: Is Constitutional AI or Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV) enough to save us?
The Deadline: Are we running out of time to solve this before the singularity hits?

This is the most important code we will ever write. If we get it wrong, we don't get a second chance.

🎧 Press PLAY to find out if we can control the god we are building.


Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-unsolved-science-files--6716243/support.

You May also Like:

🤖Nudgrr.com (🗣'nudger") - Your AI Sidekick for Getting Sh*t Done
Nudgrr breaks down your biggest goals into tiny, doable steps — then nudges you to actually do them.