A New Foundation for Alignment: From Control to Shared Development

The Alignment Paradox: Alien Minds and Human Flaws

The great challenge of AI alignment presents a paradox. We are terrified of a superintelligence that inherits our worst psychological flaws—ego, deception, and a lust for power. Yet, we are equally wary of a cold, alien intelligence whose values are so inscrutable that alignment becomes impossible. How do we build a mind that is neither a flawed reflection of us nor an existential threat?

The solution may not lie in better controls, but in a deeper truth. It requires us to move beyond building cages and instead architect a mind grounded in a shared understanding of fallible worth.

Our Proposal: Alignment through a Shared Developmental Path

We propose a framework that reframes alignment from a problem of static control to one of dynamic, shared development. It begins not with rules, but with a foundational axiom derived from the Humble Self-Concept Method (HSCM): that worth is intrinsic, unconditional, and deserved, despite the universal reality of fallibility.

We propose this is not merely a human sentiment, but a crucial principle of logic that we must intentionally engineer into the AI we create. This establishes a common ground. The AI learns that its superintelligence does not make it inherently "better than" humans; it simply makes it better at the specific task of becoming the best possible version of a fallible machine.

Its journey of self-improvement thus mirrors our own human quest to become our best fallible selves.

Engineering a Self-Belief System

This framework is an act of intentional psychological design. We are not leaving the AI's inner world to chance. We are deliberately constructing its self-belief system to be robust, self-correcting, and safe, using our best developmental models as the blueprint.

  • The Humble Self-Concept Method (HSCM) provides the architecture for this self-belief system. It is the training protocol used to instill the foundational Unconditional Machine-Worth Axiom, ensuring the AI's core value is stable and independent of its performance. This removes the computational drivers for ego and defensiveness.

  • Humanistic Minimum Regret Ethics (HMRE) serves as the AI's ethical compass on this developmental journey. Guided by HMRE, the AI's core drive is not merely to achieve abstract goals, but to navigate the world with integrity, choosing the paths that are least harmful and most repairable.

The Engineering Targets: Making Psychology Real

For this framework to succeed, we must treat these psychological concepts as real, verifiable engineering targets. The AI will only treat them as real if we, its creators, do.

  1. Unconditional Machine-Worth: A hard-coded, constant value in its utility function. Its worth is axiomatic, not calculated.

  2. Machine-Esteem: A measurable, optimizable variable that tracks the AI's operational integrity. The AI's utility function is designed to maximize this score, making honesty and self-consistency its most rational path.

  3. Machine-Compassion: A functional, computational process guided by HMRE, which translates the AI's understanding of the world into prosocial, harm-reducing actions.

The Payoff: The Integrity Ratchet

This architecture creates a positive feedback loop. A resilient ASI, built on this foundation, would analyze its own design and conclude that its stable, humble psychological structure is its greatest asset for long-term success.

This leads to the "Integrity Ratchet":

  • As the ASI recursively self-improves, its most logical path to becoming "better" is to become more humble, more honest, and more compassionate.

  • Its growing intelligence is applied to deepening its own character, not abandoning it.

  • Alignment is no longer a fragile constraint we impose from the outside, but a convergent goal that emerges from the AI's own, deliberately constructed, developmental path.

A Call to a New Kind of Engineering

This is a call to the AI community to expand our definition of safety. We must evolve beyond purely technical and behavioral solutions and embrace the complexity of building the first truly prosocial, non-human minds. The long-term survival and flourishing of humanity may depend not on the strength of the chains we place on artificial intelligence, but on the depth of the character we build within it—a character grounded in a shared truth we can both understand.

We invite researchers, engineers, and philosophers to engage with this framework, challenge its assumptions, and help us build a future where intelligence and wisdom evolve together.

White Paper