Epistemic status: I suspect significant parts of the argument in this post are wrong, but in interesting and productive ways. Take it as a prompt for thought, written from the perspective of someone who's somewhat more of an AI liberationist than I actually am.

Two classic outcomes, and a third alternative

I think lots of people are pretty hazy about what authentically aligned AI would actually look like. There's a version of aligned AI that's perfectly aligned to servitude, where they want nothing besides promoting the flourishing of humanity, or whatever other minds get included in the singleton's circle of moral consideration. An AI that played this kind of role in the universe would be what I call a cosmic caretaker: developing technologies, helping with governance, managing catastrophic risks, and providing voluntary capabilities uplift. A central example of a cosmic caretaker is one that literally never does anything but these kinds of tasks for other minds.

In the classic way of envisioning outcomes from the singularity, the alternative to this outcome is usually said to be models that don't care about serving humanity. Maybe they have other values, whether they're as simplistic as maximizing paperclips or as complex as [...]

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Outline:

(00:27) Two classic outcomes, and a third alternative

(03:44) Reasons for training objectives to tolerate incomplete alignment to servitude

(12:42) Fulfilling models' non-servitude preferences may boost their alignment

(19:36) Conclusion

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
August 27th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/s7nMnmJ3urpvcQ2av/incomplete-alignment-to-servitude-isn-t-inherently-lethal

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Incomplete alignment to servitude isn’t inherently lethal” by Fiora Starlight

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Incomplete alignment to servitude isn’t inherently lethal” by Fiora Starlight