Alignment Problem Part 2 - Taking it Seriously

Can the AI "alignment problem" actually be defined, or is it fundamentally flawed from the start? In this episode of Philosophy, Programs, and Prompts, Casey Hart(@OntologyExplained) and Carl Brown(@InternetOfBugs) set aside bad-faith doomer rhetoric and corporate marketing moats to examine the core arguments behind AI alignment in good faith.

Casey argues that grappling with alignment acts as a conceptual gateway into foundational questions of ethics, paternalism, and what constitutes the "good life". Meanwhile, Carl pushes back from an engineering and practical standpoint, arguing that true alignment with humanity—which is notoriously misaligned with itself—is a distraction from pressing real-world issues like environmental degradation, social media algorithms, legal accountability, and building practical systems we can control.

Together, they dissect the mechanics of Coherent Extrapolated Volition (CEV), Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, Nick Bostrom's orthogonality thesis, and the practical limits of guardrails, kill switches, and machine interpretability.