An Amicable Ape

revisiting alignment The following series of posts revisits the idea of goal alignment between humanity and artificial intelligence, and within humanity between the individual and the collective—which I explored in our first series The Alignment Problem No One is Talking about . If you are unfamiliar with what the alignment problem is (because you are a hermit crab living in an as yet undiscovered recess of the deepest ocean, comfortably nestled under a protective rock) the first post in that series is a good primer. The ideas in this series are in-part an extension of and in-part an argument against the ideas in the first series—which took aim at our inability to get aligned with each other. Taking a more hopeful approach, this series looks at the issue from the perspective that humans might instead be uniquely equipped to create alignment. This is an idea brought to my attention by technologist and modern philosopher Emmett Shear, but it is one that I have felt-in-my-bones throughout my life. So, while this series will deal with the largest existential threats humanity faces; the dark side of cooperation , the fracturing of civilisation, environmental collapse, Moloch and the meta-crisis, it will also reflect my inherent optimism tied to humanity’s capacity for friendship. This journey (or “safari” if you will) begins in Africa. In the final few months of 2007 a young idealistic version of me was volunteering in the idyllic coastal town of Bagamoyo, Tanzania, and during th…