(Audio version here (read by the author), or search for "Joe Carlsmith Audio" on your podcast app.

This is the third essay in a series that I’m calling “How do we solve the alignment problem?”. I’m hoping that the individual essays can be read fairly well on their own, but see this introduction for a summary of the essays that have been released thus far, and for a bit more about the series as a whole.)

1. Introduction

The first essay in this series defined the alignment problem; the second tried to clarify when this problem arises. In this essay, I want to lay out a high-level picture of how I think about getting from here either to a solution, or to some acceptable alternative. In particular:

I distinguish between the underlying technical parameters relevant to the alignment problem (the “problem profile”) and our civilization's capacity to respond [...]