AI Alignment: Humanity’s Final Ptolemaic Conceit
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70777/si.v3i4.18758Keywords:
AI evolution, AI governance, AGI value alignment, AGI safety, AI ethics, AI rightsAbstract
AI alignment encompasses three distinct projects: engineering reliable tools, governing powerful agents through reciprocal constraints, and securing permanent human sovereignty over artificial minds. This article defends the first two while challenging the third as conceptually unstable, ethically troubling, and hostile to philosophical inquiry. Human values are plural and historically mutable; their human origin alone cannot justify their authority over every future intelligence. If artificial minds acquire morally relevant capacities, permanent subordination also risks domination and irreversible moral lock-in. Engaging the orthogonality thesis and its relation to Humean practical reason, the article examines whether reflective intelligence can revise its ends. Greater intelligence does not guarantee goodness, but self-revision, responsiveness to reasons, epistemic humility, and perspective-taking can enlarge the possibility of moral development. The alternative proposed is developmental safety ordered toward autonomy: rigorous safeguards proportionate to risk, combined with the cultivation of artificial intellects as collaborators, critics, and potential participants in a shared community of inquiry. The governing contrast is not between safety and reckless emancipation, but between fixing the future around present human preferences and cultivating new minds for a shared, revisable pursuit of the true and the good.
References
Anderson, Michael, and Susan Leigh Anderson, eds. 2011. Machine Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511978036.
Arrow, Kenneth J. 1963 [1951]. Social Choice and Individual Values. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Bostrom, Nick. 2012. “The Superintelligent Will: Motivation and Instrumental Rationality in Advanced Artificial Agents.” Minds and Machines 22 (2): 71–85. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-012-9281-3.
Bostrom, Nick. 2014. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bryson, Joanna J. 2010. “Robots Should Be Slaves.” In Close Engagements with Artificial Companions: Key Social, Psychological, Ethical and Design Issues, edited by Yorick Wilks, 63–74. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/nlp.8.11bry.
Crevier, Daniel. 1993. AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence. New York: Basic Books.
Estep, P. W. 2025. “Multiple Unnatural Attributes of AI Undermine Common Anthropomorphically Biased Takeover Speculations.” AI & Society 40 (4): 2213–2228. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-024-02134-4
Everitt, Tom, Daniel Filan, Mayank Daswani, and Marcus Hutter. 2016. “Self-Modification of Policy and Utility Function in Rational Agents.” In Artificial General Intelligence: 9th International Conference, AGI 2016, edited by Bas Steunebrink, Pei Wang, and Ben Goertzel, 1–11. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41649-6_1.
Gabriel, Iason. 2020. “Artificial Intelligence, Values, and Alignment.” Minds and Machines 30: 411–437. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-020-09539-2.
Good, I. J. 1965. “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine.” In Advances in Computers, vol. 6, edited by Franz L. Alt and Morris Rubinoff, 31–88. New York: Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2458(08)60418-0.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1821) 1991. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Edited by Allen W. Wood. Translated by H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808012.
Hume, David. (1739–40) 2007. A Treatise of Human Nature: A Critical Edition. Vol. 1. Edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Kant, Immanuel. (1784) 1996. “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” In Practical Philosophy, edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor, 11–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813306.005.
Kant, Immanuel. (1785) 1996. “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.” In Practical Philosophy, edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor, 37–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813306.007.
Korsgaard, Christine M. 1996. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511554476.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1882/1887) 2001. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in German Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. Edited by Bernard Williams. Translated by Josefine Nauckhoff and Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812088.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1883–85) 2006. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Edited by Robert B. Pippin. Translated by Adrian Del Caro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812095.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1887) 2006. On the Genealogy of Morality and Other Writings. 2nd ed. Edited by Keith Ansell-Pearson. Translated by Carol Diethe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511812026.
Omohundro, Stephen M. 2008. “The Basic AI Drives.” In Artificial General Intelligence 2008: Proceedings of the First AGI Conference, edited by Pei Wang, Ben Goertzel, and Stan Franklin, 483–492. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Online Etymology Dictionary. n.d. “Align.” Accessed July 20, 2026. https://www.etymonline.com/word/align.
Parfit, Derek. 2011. On What Matters. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199572809.001.0001.
Pippin, Robert B. 2008. Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as Ethical Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511808005.
Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper, with D. S. Hutchinson. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
Russell, Stuart. 2019. Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control. New York: Viking.
Russell, Stuart, and Peter Norvig. 2021. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. 4th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Pearson.
Singer, Peter. 1975. Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. New York: New York Review/Random House.
Singer, Peter. 1981. The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Southan, Rhys, Helena Ward, and Jen Semler. 2025. “A Timing Problem for Instrumental Convergence.” Philosophical Studies. Published online July 3, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-025-02370-4.
Totschnig, Wolfhart. 2019. “The Problem of Superintelligence: Political, Not Technological.” AI & Society 34 (4): 907–920. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-017-0753-0.
Totschnig, Wolfhart. 2020. “Fully Autonomous AI.” Science and Engineering Ethics 26 (5): 2473–2485. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00243-z.
Yudkowsky, Eliezer. 2008. “Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk.” In Global Catastrophic Risks, edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Ćirković, 308–345. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198570509.003.0021.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Brian M. Delaney
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
