1. Frontmatter

1.1 Backstory for this post

As my regular readers know (see Intro to Brain-Like-AGI Safety), I’m working on the technical alignment problem for a hypothetical future “brain-like AGI”, with a particular focus on how human social and moral drives work.

After all, if it's possible for humans to do stuff that ultimately leads to a good future, then it's probably also possible for sufficiently human-like AGIs to do stuff that ultimately leads to a good future. Or if it's not possible for humans to do stuff that ultimately leads to a good future, then we’re screwed no matter what. But assuming it's possible, the “sufficiently human-like AGIs” would certainly need to have good prosocial motivations. This is an unsolved problem, and very much not the default (see We need a field of Reward Function Design), but there's probably some solution that's inspired by how humans (sometimes) wind up with good prosocial motivations.

I’ve been working on this problem for years, but most of that work has involved laying foundations (e.g. trying to understand how human social drives work). Whereas in the past four months, I’ve been thinking very directly about how to apply those ideas to AGI.

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The original text contained 13 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
July 8th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rKdS7i4StaMmFzYRo/notes-on-technical-alignment-via-human-like-social-drives

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

A 2x2 matrix showing rewards based on friend/enemy status and whether they're thinking about you.

Homer Simpson with angel and devil versions on his shoulders.

Diagram comparing person-first and desire-first approaches to identity and pride.

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“Notes on technical alignment via human-like social drives” by Steven Byrnes

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Notes on technical alignment via human-like social drives” by Steven Byrnes