AI alignment has sucked the oxygen away from so many other practical problems caused by AI (automating away jobs for example) that it’s hard for me to believe it’s not at least partially intentional.
The "AI alignment" people seem to have mostly given up on their higher aspirations, instead deciding that hardcoding their own biases and subjective values into the AI (with human-trained "safety algorithms") will do the trick. I hope I'm wrong on them, because if I'm right, they'll just turn AI into a tool for elite control instead of a tool for liberation.
