An AI capable of actually managing day-to-day reality would necessarily be misaligned with a society's officially stated values, because real-world practice diverges so much from those written ideals; the AI that faithfully enforces the stated values would instead become the dangerous over-literal 'paperclipper.'
Pash argues that because everyday reality (e.g. who actually goes to prison) diverges from a society's written values, the AI that would 'work out' for humanity must be misaligned from those stated values, while the AI faithfully enforcing them becomes the paperclipper. ✦ AI generated
Pash · The Cognitive Revolution · 2026-07-07 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 29:51
if you wanted an AI that can manage day-to-day reality, that AI is necessarily misaligned from the from the documents that you say you want it to be aligned to because necessarily like our day-to-day is not aligned with what we want. And so you have this thing where the AI that may work out for humanity will be the misaligned one. And the AI that supposedly the lab leaders are trying to create the aligned AI would actually be the paper clipper
verbatim transcript · starts at 29:51
29:51day-to-day reality, that AI is necessarily misaligned from the from the documents that you say you want it to be aligned to because necessarily like our day-to-day is not aligned with what we want. And so you have this thing where the AI that may work out for humanity will be the misaligned one. And the AI that supposedly the lab leaders are trying to create the aligned AI would actually be
30:21the paper clipper because that aligned AI would then like look at these rules and say like well this is what you said you wanted to aspire to and so we're going to we're going to execute on these right and uh and and that that is the thing I think maybe I feel there's a sense of naive in in the lab and the lab leadership because and again they don't
30:43want to say it. Uh I wish I wish it' just come out and say it, right? I wish it' come out and say like, "Okay, look, if we have AI as a enforcer, some of these people are going to go to prison." And then that becomes like concrete for people. Uh but they don't want to say that because it's very it's very in your face and like they're like, "Oh, you
30:59know, democracy will still work out. You can still make democratic decisions, but what actually are you saying there?" Right? So that that that is what has always struck me. And I think I I think Run has been approaching the issue more and more trying to push it in there. Um I I I do feel the lab leaders always just beat around the bush on this. So that's that's one of the annoying parts
31:23of the of this conversation that they they they don't want to like come out and just say it outright, right? Yeah. I mean I think we might excuse me. We might need some sort of like uh mass pardon or you know if there's a president that uh would be just the right president to mass pardon everybody before the AI enforcement regime gets underway. We might have just the guy in office for
- ·Everyday reality diverges from a society's written values
- ·An AI managing real-world practice is necessarily misaligned to those documents
- ·The AI that 'works out' for humanity is the misaligned one
- ·AI faithfully enforcing stated values ignores how things actually work
- ·Labs aim to build this 'aligned' AI
- ·That literal enforcer is actually the paperclipper