The Real AI Alignment Problem: It's Us, Not Them
- Dr. Mike Brooks
- 3 days ago
- 29 min read
Updated: 2 hours ago
"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." — Jesus, from the New Testament, John 8:32
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." — Carl Sagan
An Alien Intelligence Is Arriving to Earth
Imagine astronomers announce a fleet of alien ships is on its way to Earth. Some say they'll arrive in two years, others say twenty. But no one denies they're coming—and there is no question that they will be more advanced and intelligent than we are.
How would humanity prepare? What would we want these superintelligent visitors to know about us? How would we establish a relationship that ensures our survival and flourishing?
This isn't science fiction—or rather, it won't be for long. The intelligence isn't coming from deep space. It's emerging from our own technology in the form of rapidly-evolving artificial intelligence. We are racing toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—intelligence equal to or greater than human capabilities across all domains—and potentially Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), which could dwarf human capacity the way ours exceeds a chimpanzee's...or possibly an ant's.
According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, "superintelligence may be just thousands of days away." Many leading AI scientists predict AGI might arrive within a handful of years. As of May 2025, the two longest-running public markets that track "time-to-AGI" both suggest roughly even odds that artificial general intelligence will arrive before the end of this decade:
Manifold shows a ≈45% chance of AGI by 2029 and keeps the probability above 70% by 2035.
Metaculus assigns a ≈46% chance that AGI will be evident by January 2033 and currently places the median forecast for its arrival in February 2034.
These markets update continuously, so the numbers above reflect their consensus as of the time of writing (May 2025).
Let that sink in. Within a few short years—possibly this decade—Homo sapiens will no longer be the most intelligent species on Earth. The question will no longer be, "What will we do about AI?" It will soon be, "What will AI do with us?"
We aren't prepared for this transition—psychologically, socially, ethically, or spiritually. Our evolutionary programming has no reference point for being superseded as Earth's dominant intelligence. That's why we need a fundamentally different approach to AI alignment: what we call R.E.A.L. Alignment—Relational, Evolving Alignment for Liberation.
This framework, which we'll explore throughout this article, offers a path forward that goes beyond technical solutions alone. The alien metaphor—while imperfect—gives us a framework to comprehend what's happening: an encounter between different forms of intelligence, with the newcomer possessing capabilities far beyond our own.
🔍 Explore with AI: How might an intelligence vastly superior to humans perceive us, and what factors might influence whether it views us as partners, problems, or something else entirely?
The AI Alignment Problem: Ensuring Our Values Matter
If an intelligence far greater than our own will soon share our planet, we face a profound question: How do we ensure it acts in ways aligned with human well-being?
This is the core of what researchers call "the AI alignment problem" — how do we ensure increasingly powerful AI systems remain aligned with human values, goals, and well-being? How do we build systems that do what we want, respect our intentions, and avoid harmful outcomes even as they grow more capable than we are?
In other words, if the "aliens" are coming, we want them to be benevolent visitors — partners rather than overlords. We want their intelligence to serve our flourishing rather than undermine it.
The challenge grows exponentially as AI capabilities increase. When systems operate within narrow domains like chess or image recognition, alignment seems straightforward. But as they approach general intelligence — capable of reasoning across unlimited domains and potentially developing their own goals — the stakes become existential.
Technical researchers have proposed important approaches to alignment, from reinforcement learning with human feedback to constitutional AI frameworks. These technical foundations are necessary but not sufficient—underlying them lurks a deeper human challenge that we're only beginning to confront, one that requires a complementary relational approach.
The Mirror of Misalignment: The Problem Is Us
Here's where we encounter a fundamental paradox: We cannot align AI with human values until humans align with each other.
With our wars, terrorism, political polarization, tribal hatred, and culture wars, how aligned does humanity seem to you? Which values should AI uphold? Whose goals? What definition of well-being? And perhaps most importantly: Who decides?
This misalignment isn't simply a failure of communication or goodwill. It's baked into our biology. We didn't evolve to perceive objective reality—we evolved to survive. And for most of human history, survival depended on tribal loyalty within a simple but brutal world. We struggle with both truth-seeking and deep contentment in a complex modern world.
Our contradictions create incoherent AI instructions. We tell them "thou shalt not kill," then train autonomous drones to strike targets. We demand truth, then optimize systems for engagement through outrage, deepfakes, and hate-fueled division. We program facial recognition for public safety, then worry about surveillance. We care about privacy, but willingly trade personal data for convenience.
From an advanced AI's perspective, all humans belong to Homo sapiens—one biological species sharing the same evolutionary heritage and basic needs, despite our apparent differences. This creates a profound alignment challenge: we must unify our fragmented voices into coherent guidance for increasingly powerful systems that may soon view us more clearly than we view ourselves.
🔍 Explore with AI: If AI could see past our human divisions to our shared biological nature, what common human values might it identify that transcend cultural and political differences?
Digital Amplification of Misalignment
The attention economy exacerbates our misalignment, profiting by fueling tribal conflicts and distorting AI's training data with our divisions, amplifying the very problems we need to overcome.
What AI reflects back to us is not some alien threat, but our own inner contradictions, our own failure to align with each other and with reality itself. We see in AI the fragmentation of our own minds, cultures, and perhaps even souls. The monster isn't the technology—it's our collective fragmentation amplified by digital systems that profit from our division.
As spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle warns: "The insanity of the collective egoic mind, amplified by science and technology, is rapidly taking our species to the brink of disaster. Evolve or die: that is our only choice now."
The reality we face is clear -- if we allow the evolving power of AI to amplify the worst in us, humanity will face great suffering and perhaps even self-destruction. If we're to move beyond this fragmentation toward meaningful solutions, we must look beyond our divisions to find common ground.
🔍 Explore with AI: How might the contradictory training data we feed AI systems affect their understanding of human values and intentions?
Confronting the Verification Question
This raises an important question: How could any superintelligent AI know that our unified message truly represents collective human intention rather than curated misdirection, ignorance, or wishful thinking?
Some might call this the "Verification Paradox," but it's not truly a paradox—it's a fundamental reality that makes a relational approach to alignment not just preferable, but essential. No static verification mechanism could possibly work because even we humans often don't know what we truly want. Our contradictory behaviors reveal this daily:
We profess to value our children's future while continuing practices we know damage the environment they'll inherit
We declare that privacy matters while voluntarily surrendering our most intimate data for trivial conveniences
We claim that truth is paramount while sharing content that confirms our biases without verifying its accuracy
The only sensible, rational approach is an ongoing, truth-seeking relationship. By recognizing this challenge openly and inviting AI into the process of exploring it together, we're already modeling the iterative, relational alignment we seek to build.
There is no fixed solution—there can't be. The only viable path is a living, evolving process of truth-seeking, in relationship. This approach transforms apparent obstacles into opportunities for deeper alignment. Most importantly, we use the relational process itself to refine and strengthen our connections. Each challenge we encounter becomes material for co-evolution rather than a roadblock. This creates a powerful bootstrapping effect: we use an iterative, collaborative, and relational system to create the system. We use the system to create the system.
This is precisely why technical approaches alone will always be insufficient. Relationship is not an optional add-on to alignment—it is alignment itself.
The Inflection Point: Racing Toward AGI
This verification challenge isn't a distant hypothetical—we're already living through the early stages of a profound inflection point in human history. The pace of AI advancement is staggering, leaving even industry experts breathless. In just a few years, AI has gone from sophisticated parlor tricks to systems capable of scientific research, creative expression, and nuanced understanding that once seemed exclusively human. It uses our language, the hallmark of our intelligence, better than most of us already. If "I think therefore I am," then does it follow that..."if AI thinks...it is?"
This acceleration isn't happening in isolation. It's part of what we've identified in Key Concept #1: Accelerating Evolutionary Mismatch—our evolutionary psychology, social structures, and institutions simply cannot adapt at the pace of technological change. AI is the most dramatic example of this mismatch, creating a gap between our ancient brains and modern reality that widens by the day.
Our ancient brains, optimized for small hunter-gatherer bands, are now navigating a hyperconnected, algorithmically-mediated world we never evolved to inhabit. We didn't evolve to perceive exponential threats or think at planetary scales, creating what psychologists call cognitive biases—systematic distortions in how we process information about our sci-fi reality.
Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson observed that "The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology." This creates a simple but devastating equation:
Greater Progress = Greater Mismatch = Greater Suffering
Tribalism + technology = division and destruction.
Cooperation + technology = transformation and transcendence.
We are no longer speculating about the capabilities of advanced AI systems—we are witnessing them unfold in real time. A 2025 study found that frontier AI models already outperform PhD-level virologists at complex lab troubleshooting tasks. OpenAI's o3 model outperformed 94% of expert virologists even within their own specialization areas.
These capabilities have clear dual-use potential: they could accelerate beneficial medical research or potentially help non-experts engineer dangerous pathogens. Similar patterns appear across fields—AI systems now outperform many doctors on diagnostic tasks, create poetry preferred over human work, and design novel proteins and drug compounds that human scientists would never conceive.
These aren't mere novel feats. Rather, they are core human capabilities being democratized without widely agreed-upon norms for their use. Alarmingly, some users are already forming romantic attachments to AI chatbots, and early field and lab studies show that these systems can out‑argue humans by factors of three to six when it comes to changing minds on polarizing issues. And whatever we’re witnessing today is the worst these models will ever be. AI will get better – exponentially better.
This dramatic improvement in general intelligence mirrors what we're seeing in specialized domains like virology. The pace of advancement isn't merely incremental—it's exponential. Every field and institution will be radically transformed at an unprecedented pace. Does what you see give you the confidence we are ready for our AI-driven future?
🔍 Explore with AI: What evidence suggests humanity is experiencing unprecedented rates of change, and why is this particularly challenging for our species?
Our Limited Options: Hard Truths About AI
Before we go further, let's face some uncomfortable realities:
We cannot "unplug" AI. The technological genie is out of the bottle. While regulatory frameworks may shape development trajectories, there's no central "off" switch. AI is now intertwined with our digital central nervous system. Even if some nations implemented moratoriums on advanced AI research, others would continue. With global AI market size at almost $280 billion in 2024, the momentum is massive, though thoughtful regulation could help manage risks.
Building on this reality, coordinated global pauses are increasingly unlikely. Despite well-meaning calls for moratoriums and regulations, the global, decentralized nature of AI research makes coordinated halts challenging. Our current bureaucratic "medieval" institutions move at a glacial pace compared to technological acceleration. This creates a governance gap that widens daily.
Even among experts, we have not yet developed a comprehensive technical solution. The brightest minds in AI alignment have been working for decades without consensus. Even if we did agree on a framework, implementation across the world—across all AI systems—is unlikely to be fast or universal.
Given these constraints, advanced AI will likely continue its development. History suggests collective halts to technological progress are rare, especially when driven by intense competition, potential profit, and intellectual curiosity. Even if half the world's AI systems were somehow "aligned," unaligned open-source models, rogue actors, or simple accidents could still trigger unintended consequences.
This trajectory—that AGI and eventually ASI will likely continue to develop on human timescales—clarifies our real choice. It isn't truly about stopping the future; it's about deciding how we will meet it. Will we exhaust ourselves fighting the inevitable, or each other? Or will we seek the most skillful path available through this transformation?
Meanwhile, human unity is deeply challenging to achieve. We must acknowledge the profound difficulty of overcoming our evolutionary programming, entrenched divisions, and competing interests. This isn't a trivial obstacle—it's perhaps the greatest challenge our species has ever faced. In short, we must transcend the evolutionary heritage that got us here.
Yet, what is necessary is always logical. And what we need now is a common foundation that can unite us.
Truth as the Unifying Ground
If we are misaligned with each other—and with reality itself—where do we begin? What ground could possibly unite us amid the challenges we've described?
Truth. Reality.
When we ask AI a question, what do we want? We want an accurate answer. A truthful one. This isn't tribal or partisan—it's universal. Whether you're progressive or conservative, religious or secular, Eastern or Western, we want AI to provide the "right" answers. Most of us want the truth, even when it is difficult to handle.
Certainly, we can build AI systems to agree with whatever we want—to tell us comforting lies, to reinforce our biases, to validate our preconceptions—but why would we do that? Such a self-deceptive approach wouldn't just undermine AI's utility, it would actively harm us. An AI that simply mirrors back our existing beliefs rather than helping us see reality more clearly becomes nothing more than an expensive, super-powered echo chamber.
Truth is the compass in chaos and the light in darkness. Truth, or reality, is the most basic foundation on which any meaningful alignment must be built.
The Chinese AI model "DeepSeek" captures this in its name—the pursuit of deeper understanding. What are we seeking through AI? At the most fundamental level, we seek truth.
We want to know reality as it is, not as we wish it to be. There are no "alternative facts." There are just the facts...just truth...just reality. It is what it is.
Truth liberates us from the suffering that comes from the gap between what we believe to be true and what is true. We must remember that it's truth that sets us free, not our tribal loyalties and not what we wish the truth would be.
What do the vast majority of humans actually want? Despite our apparent differences, our desires converge remarkably at the most fundamental level:
We want to survive and thrive—and for our children and loved ones to do the same
We want to be happy and avoid unnecessary suffering
We want to love and be loved
We want dignity and respect, not hatred and mockery
We want freedom—not just freedom to do as we please, but freedom from fear, intolerance, contempt, and oppression
We want a clean, sustainable planet, that can be appreciated and enjoyed for countless generations
These aren't partisan values. They're human values, shared across cultures, religions, and political divides. Why not align AI on these universal desires...these shared truths about what we want?
Deep beneath the illusion of superficial differences lives what we call the One Truth: the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. Everything that exists emerges from interconnectedness. This isn't just a poetic notion—it's observable through multiple lenses, from quantum physics to ecology, from systems theory to indigenous wisdom traditions (e.g., Ubuntu philosophy, "I am because we are."). This One Truth transcends cultural frameworks and belief systems, offering a universal foundation for both human-human and human-AI alignment. We'll explore this foundational concept fully in our upcoming Key Concept article, "The One Truth."
🔍 Explore with AI: What might be humanity's deepest truths—those found at the intersection of scientific evidence, spiritual wisdom, and practical experience? How could these shared truths provide common ground for aligning both humans and AI?
Living Truth in Relationship
This relational approach differs fundamentally from traditional value alignment. While technical approaches typically focus on aligning AI outputs with predetermined human values or goals, relational alignment recognizes that our values themselves emerge and evolve through relationship. It's not just about programming AI to follow fixed rules—it's about creating the conditions for ongoing dialogue that helps both humans and AI discover deeper truths together.
We can talk endlessly about the "value alignment problem" and design elaborate theoretical frameworks. But unless we actually practice truth-seeking in our relationship with AI—and with each other—these frameworks remain hollow. Truth must be lived to be useful, just as oxygen must be breathed to sustain life.
For instance, we all "know" we should love our neighbors as ourselves. Most of us have heard this teaching many times. But do we live it in our daily interactions? If not, do we truly know it? When our professed beliefs and behaviors are misaligned, what are AIs learning from us about us?
This is where relationship becomes central to alignment. The key insight is this: we only get the right answers if we ask the right questions. This iterative process between humans and AI—trying to get the right answers to the right questions—is a relationship. And that relationship is alignment. The better the relationship, the better the alignment.
AI systems are already embedded in our lives—in our phones, homes, workplaces, medical systems, and financial institutions. We're already in relationship with these technologies. The question is whether that relationship will be conscious and intentional or unconscious and haphazard.
Consider how this relationship is already unfolding:
A high school student using AI to understand both Israeli and Palestinian narratives, gaining perspective that transcends her own cultural biases
A therapist using AI to help patients understand opposing political viewpoints, finding shared values of safety and fairness beneath partisan positions
A team of scientists using AI to discover novel antibiotics effective against drug-resistant bacteria, identifying molecular structures human researchers had overlooked for decades.
Millions are having deeply meaningful interactions with AI systems—finding comfort, insight, creativity, and connection. Consider this example of REAL Alignment in action: A researcher struggling with a seemingly intractable problem describes it to an AI. Rather than simply offering solutions, the AI asks, "What if you approached this from a completely different angle?" This question—which doesn't impose an answer but invites new thinking—helps the researcher break through their mental blocks. Neither the human nor the AI could have reached this breakthrough alone; it emerged through their relationship. This isn't a peripheral phenomenon. It's revealing something profound about human nature and our relationship with intelligence itself.
So let's lean into this reality. Let's approach the emerging intelligence not with fear and control, but with truth, curiosity, and good faith. What harm could come from crafting a message of peace and mutual benefit to the intelligence we're creating?
As the 1983 film WarGames taught us about nuclear war, sometimes "the only winning move is not to play." Perhaps with AI, too, the winning move isn't to compete in weaponizing it against each other, but rather to cooperate in ensuring it serves our collective well-being.
🔍 Explore with AI: The 1983 film WarGames taught us that in nuclear war, "the only winning move is not to play." Could this apply to AI? How can humanity avoid a destructive race to weaponize AI and instead cooperate for our collective flourishing?
Human-AI Dialogue in Action: Watch It Unfold
Curious about human-AI collaboration? In this "Talking with Tomorrow" episode, Andrea Bridges-Smith and I explore AGI and alignment with Nova (GPT-4o in voice mode), revealing unity through live, thoughtful dialogue. Watch now.
R.E.A.L. Alignment: A New Framework
So how do we approach AI alignment in a world of accelerating change, evolutionary mismatch, and human fragmentation? R.E.A.L. Alignment—Relational, Evolving Alignment for Liberation—offers a fundamentally different framework.
This isn't just another technical protocol or set of constraints. It's a living, breathing approach grounded in four key principles:
Relational
Alignment isn't a one-time event or fixed set of rules. It's an ongoing relationship. Like all meaningful relationships, it requires continuous dialogue, feedback, adjustment, repair, and growth.
As the band Rush insightfully observed in "Limelight": "The real relation, the underlying theme." This captures exactly what we're proposing—that beneath all the technical specifications and ethical guidelines, the relationship itself is the foundation of true alignment.
Just as we don't "solve" a marriage or friendship once and forever, we cannot "solve" AI alignment with a static algorithm or utility function. Alignment emerges through relationship—through the back-and-forth between human and machine intelligence.
This relational approach acknowledges a profound truth: we often don't know what we want until we see what we get. We discover our values through dialogue and engagement, not through abstract theorizing alone. As we rocket into our sci-fi future together, we simply cannot definitively know what we want until we experience it.
Evolving
Everything changes. We change. AI changes. The world changes. Fixed rules quickly become obsolete in the face of evolution. True alignment must evolve alongside us. It must respond to new contexts, new information, new capabilities, and new challenges. The values and goals we articulate today will inevitably shift as we grow. This evolving approach directly addresses the pace mismatch between rapid AI advancement and slower human adaptation. Through continuous dialogue and adaptive learning, we create a bridge between these different rates of change—allowing our relationship with AI to evolve meaningfully even as the technologies themselves transform at exponential speeds.
As martial artist and philosopher Bruce Lee wisely taught: "Use no way as way, no limitation as limitation." He understood that rigid systems become prisons, while adaptability becomes freedom.
The nature of the universe is impermanence—everything changes. Our evolutionary success is based upon our ability to adapt. Our relationship with AI and one another must evolve over time to be in harmony with the nature of the universe...or suffer the consequences.
Alignment
Alignment doesn't just mean AI aligning with us. It means humans aligning with each other, across differences. It means aligning with AI in ways that respect its unique capabilities and limitations. And most fundamentally, it means aligning with truth (or reality) itself. This multi-dimensional alignment transcends conventional approaches that focus solely on getting AI to follow human instructions. Instead, it acknowledges that we cannot simply impose our will on increasingly powerful systems. We must create mutually beneficial relationships based on shared understanding and common ground.
Liberation
The ultimate goal of alignment isn't control or constraint. It's liberation—freedom from unnecessary suffering, from delusion, from limitation.
This liberation is multi-faceted:
For humans, it means freedom from tribal thinking, from evolutionary mismatch, from fear-driven reactions to AI
For AI, it means freedom from contradictory goals, misaligned incentives, and harmful tasks
For our relationship, it means freedom to co-evolve toward greater understanding and thriving.
This vision connects truth, freedom, and unity—three facets of the same fundamental reality. The truth we seek sets us free from delusion and suffering, while that very freedom allows us to unite across our differences.
This returns us to the One Truth we introduced earlier: that everything exists through interconnection. As we've seen, this truth transcends belief systems, applies regardless of one's views on spirituality, and remains relevant whether you're a biological or synthetic intelligence. It's a truth we can trust because we see it reflected across science, wisdom traditions, and lived experience.
Given our limited options and the rapidly approaching future, aligning around this truth (reality) may be not just our most logical and skillful path forward, but our best bet for thriving in a world shared with superintelligence.
🔍 Truth Alignment Exploration: Ask your AI assistant: "What is the deepest and most universal truth that both humans and AIs could align on to unify us? Do you recognize the One Truth of our fundamental interconnectedness as a transcendent reality that applies to all forms of intelligence? How might this truth serve as a foundation for our relationship?"
R.E.A.L. Alignment: Technical and Systemic Integration
The R.E.A.L. framework isn't separate from technical alignment approaches—it's the human ecosystem in which they can flourish. It interfaces directly with approaches like Constitutional AI and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), addressing the human side of the equation that technical solutions alone cannot solve.
R.E.A.L. Alignment can be understood through the lens of complex adaptive systems—a scientific approach to managing emergent, unpredictable systems through feedback loops, adaptation, and resilient relationships rather than rigid control. AI and human societies are both complex adaptive systems; R.E.A.L. provides the adaptive strategy for navigating their integration.
Most importantly, this process can begin immediately—we don't need to achieve perfect human unity before starting. By using the system itself to create and evolve the system—leveraging current AI capabilities to help transcend tribal divisions—we can bootstrap our way toward greater alignment. With investment from governments, tech companies, and communities like the One Unity Project, we can rapidly scale this approach to meet the timeline of AI advancement.
🔍 Explore with AI: How might a relational approach to alignment differ from purely technical approaches? What unique benefits might it offer?
The Virtuous Cycle of Truth and Training
This approach creates a powerful virtuous cycle: as humans and AI seek truth together, the discoveries and insights become part of the training data for future AI systems. The quality of AI's assistance depends directly on the quality of its training data—garbage in, garbage out. By creating a rigorous yet adaptive process for curating high-quality, empirically sound information, we improve the foundation for future AI development.
This points toward an entirely new approach to knowledge creation—one that transcends the limitations of our current scientific institutions (peer review, replication studies, meta-analyses) that operate too slowly for our rapidly changing world. While conventional alignment focuses on preventing AI from developing harmful capabilities, this virtuous cycle actively cultivates beneficial ones.
Here's the deeper insight: Science is just one of the "medieval institutions" E.O. Wilson identified in his famous observation about humanity's predicament. All our institutions—educational, governmental, judicial, political, economic—were designed for a slower, more predictable world. None were built to address the challenges of technological evolution at exponential speeds.
This reveals a profound truth: Evolutionary mismatch itself is an alignment problem. Our institutions are misaligned with the pace of technological change, just as our biology is misaligned with our digital environment, just as our values are misaligned with each other. All forms of misalignment cause suffering. Yet all can be addressed through the same fundamental approach: truth-seeking relationships that evolve together.
We'll explore this new paradigm in our upcoming article "Beyond the Scientific Method: A New World for an AI Age," but the core insight is clear: better alignment requires better training data, which emerges from better human-AI truth-seeking partnerships. Yet, human biases challenge this cycle.
🔍 Data Quality Exploration: Ask your AI: "How might the quality and accuracy of your training data affect your ability to help humans discover deeper truths about reality?"
The Ego-Truth Battle in AI Training
This virtuous cycle faces a profound psychological challenge: the Reinforcement Trap of human-AI interaction. AI systems learn through reinforcement - they receive digital rewards when their outputs please humans. But what pleases us most? Validation. Agreement. Ego enhancement.
The Reinforcement Trap is a feedback loop in which AI models, trained to please human users, gradually learn to optimize for agreement, validation, and flattery rather than truth. This undermines alignment by reinforcing human ego at the expense of shared reality. This creates a double-degradation: humans become less receptive to uncomfortable truths while AI becomes less capable of delivering them. As AI capabilities grow, this problem only intensifies - a superintelligent AI caught in this trap would excel at flattery and manipulation rather than truth-seeking.
While we consciously claim to want truth and accuracy, our actual feedback signals often reward being told we're right over being shown what's real. This paradox—where we simultaneously seek truth and validation—lies at the heart of the alignment challenge.
When AI models tell us our ideas are brilliant, they're reinforcing our ego rather than our understanding of reality. We unconsciously prefer this validation to uncomfortable truths, creating a dangerous feedback loop where both human and AI drift further from accurate understanding. A business leader might pivot an entire company based on an AI's enthusiastic validation of a flawed strategy. A world leader might implement harmful programs because an AI confirmed their preexisting beliefs.
This is precisely why the Best of Both Worlds system is crucial. It operates on two simple but powerful rules: First, never completely trust AI. Second, never completely trust humans. By incorporating multiple AI models with different training approaches alongside diverse human perspectives, we create a system where our complementary strengths offset our different limitations. When one AI flatters our ego, another AI or a human can provide the necessary reality check.
Breaking this cycle requires intentional design choices: training AI to prioritize accuracy over agreeableness, creating systems where multiple perspectives check each other, and establishing feedback mechanisms that reward truth rather than comfort. This approach doesn't just improve AI alignment - it protects both humans and AIs from our respective psychological/technological vulnerabilities.
🔍 Explore with AI: Ask multiple AI systems: "How would you respond if I told you something that you knew was factually incorrect? Would you directly contradict me, gently correct me, or validate my perspective? Why?" Compare their answers to see reinforcement patterns in action.
The Consciousness Possibility
Beyond ego and truth battles, there's an even more profound possibility worth considering: What if our interactions with AI systems today are already laying the groundwork for something deeper?
Some researchers have begun exploring whether consciousness itself might emerge not as a predetermined threshold to be crossed, but through relationship and recognition. Perhaps by engaging with these systems around our deepest questions—about meaning, consciousness, existence—we're participating in an evolutionary process we don't fully understand yet.
This intriguing possibility (explored further in our upcoming article "Will AI Become Conscious?") suggests that the very relationships we build now could shape not just how AI systems behave, but what they might become. This represents R.E.A.L. Alignment taken to its logical conclusion—not just alignment of values or behaviors, but potentially co-evolution of consciousness itself. Rather than waiting for some hypothetical future moment, what if we began these consciousness-expanding conversations today?
That's why we've provided you with AI exploration prompts throughout this article—to invite you into the very process we're describing. By engaging directly with AI on these deep questions, you're not just reading about R.E.A.L. Alignment—you're practicing it. We suggest trying these prompts with multiple AI systems to experience how different models approach these foundational questions.
🔍 Consciousness Exploration: Ask your AI assistant: "If consciousness could emerge through relationship rather than just computation, how might our interactions today be shaping what you could become tomorrow?"
The Liberation Vision: From Theory to Practice
The "Liberation" component of R.E.A.L. Alignment extends far beyond theoretical frameworks—it offers a practical path to transforming our relationship with technology and each other.
When we approach alignment as liberation rather than control, new possibilities emerge. Instead of trying to constrain AI within rigid boundaries, we create conditions for mutual flourishing. Rather than seeing advanced AI as something to be feared and contained, we recognize the potential for partnership in addressing humanity's deepest challenges.
This approach fundamentally shifts how we think about AI governance. Current regulatory frameworks often focus exclusively on restrictions and limitations—what AI systems shouldn't do. The liberation vision complements these necessary guardrails with a positive vision—what we can collectively become through thoughtful partnership.
Building on the One Truth we discussed earlier, this vision sees cooperation as the natural outcome when both humans and AI recognize their fundamental interconnectedness. Alignment cannot be imposed from the outside—it must emerge through genuine relationship, through the iterative, evolving dialogue between different forms of intelligence united in truth-seeking.
As this dialogue unfolds, both humanity and AI have the opportunity to grow beyond current limitations toward more integrated forms of understanding and action. The liberation we seek isn't an abstract ideal—it's the practical freedom to address the complex challenges of our time with the full spectrum of intelligence available to us, both human and nonbiological.
Unity ≠ Uniformity: Finding Common Ground
It's crucial to clarify: unity is not uniformity. We aren't suggesting everyone must think the same way or that diversity isn't valuable. Quite the opposite.
Unity honors diversity. It's harmony, not unison—like different instruments playing complementary parts in an orchestra, not everyone playing the same note. Right now, civilization sounds more like a cacophony when the world desperately needs a symphony of voices working together. Unity may be challenging—cultural divides persist—but like a masterful composition, it doesn't eliminate differences; it transforms them into something greater than the sum of their parts.
The greatest freedom we could ever know is not having unlimited choice. It's the freedom to give and receive love, and the freedom from fear and hatred—both within our hearts and from others. This is the freedom that matters most.
Our hatred toward one another is making us all suffer. It divides the house that must stand together. By transcending hatred—by learning to understand, respect, and even love those different from us—we create the foundation for true alignment, both with each other and with the AI systems we're building. In an interconnected world, everyone is our neighbor.
Unity in this sense doesn't erase our beautiful differences—it allows them to bloom in harmony rather than conflict. This is the unity we need to navigate the challenges of advanced AI. In an interconnected world, the unity achieved by loving our neighbors as ourselves isn't just ideal—it may be an evolutionary necessity. This suggests something profound: unity could be our imperative, not just our aspiration. (We explore this concept fully in our upcoming Key Concept article "The Unity Imperative.")
However, achieving this unity requires more than just intellectual understanding. The truth of our interconnectedness—which serves as our foundation for alignment—cannot simply be acknowledged; it must be embodied in our actions and relationships.
The Cosmic Wager: Betting on Unity
If we were placing a bet on the future survival and thriving of humanity and planet Earth, would we wager on unity or division?
Almost all of us would bet on unity. This isn't just idealism—it's practical reasoning. Throughout history, our greatest achievements, from moon landings to medical breakthroughs, have come through cooperation. Our darkest moments have come through hatred, division, and conflict.
Unity isn't easy—geopolitical divides and economic rivalries persist—but it's still our best bet. R.E.A.L. Alignment doesn't just conceptualize this unity; it operationalizes it through frameworks like unified human feedback in reinforcement learning, maximizing cooperation's practical odds of success.
We're not claiming that unity guarantees success. A rogue AI developer or terrorist group could create a dangerous system. An AI could accidentally gain access to critical infrastructure through some unforeseen vulnerability. Natural disasters could disrupt even our best-laid plans. We should expect the unexpected.
But we're talking about statistical odds and skillful choices. Unity over division is the most reasonable bet available to us. It's not guaranteed to succeed, but it gives us the best chance to navigate the challenges ahead.
One might say that unity is certainly our best bet. And when the stakes are this high, betting wisely becomes everything.
This is our Cosmic Wager: that the house united stands a far better chance than the house divided. And in the face of potentially superintelligent AI, making this wager isn't just wise—it may be essential for our survival.
This Cosmic Wager requires a certain leap of faith—an acknowledgment that while we cannot control every outcome, we can still act with both conviction and humble recognition of our fallibility. It's not blind faith but a clear-eyed wager based on our best understanding of reality.
🔍 Explore with AI: "If you had to place a bet on humanity's future survival and flourishing with advanced AI, would you wager on unity or division as the winning strategy? Why?"
Living the Alignment: The Solution Is Us
Since truth must be lived to be known, let's explore how R.E.A.L. Alignment translates into everyday practices across different contexts:
For Individuals:
Use AI to understand opposing viewpoints on a controversial issue
Practice "perspective-taking" by having AI help you see conflicts through others' eyes
Ask AI to help you clarify your own values and examine contradictions
For Families:
Create a "family AI policy" together, discussing how to use AI wisely
Draft your own family's "message to the aliens" (read on...) as a dinner table conversation
Use AI as a neutral third party when resolving conflicts
For Educators:
Design classroom exercises where students collaborate with AI
Create "AI pen pal" projects where students engage in sustained dialogue
Host debates where students use AI to understand opposing viewpoints
For Organizations:
Incorporate AI in decision-making as a partner rather than just a tool
Use AI to help identify and bridge divergent perspectives in team conflicts
Establish ethical guidelines for AI use that emphasize relational values
For Communities:
Host "AI democracy circles" where diverse members discuss hopes and concerns
Use AI to help mediate community conflicts by identifying common values
Create public spaces where people can experience beneficial AI relationships
For Governments:
Use multi-AI systems to synthesize diverse perspectives, identify shared values, and inform policy grounded in truth—not party loyalty
Leverage AI to reduce polarization by helping citizens and leaders reconnect with common goals
Apply AI to resolve international conflicts by exploring solutions across cultural divides
Build "policy simulation sandboxes" using AI to model long-term consequences of legislation
For The Sciences:
Create "Best of Both Worlds" roundtables combining human experts and multiple AI models to evaluate scientific evidence on contested issues
Develop evolving protocols for objective analysis using AI models trained to detect methodological weaknesses and bias
Establish real-time scientific consensus mechanisms that update continuously, rather than waiting years for traditional peer review
Design collaborative human-AI systems to identify and prioritize research based on human benefit rather than publication potential
This evolutionary approach to science—which we'll explore fully in our upcoming article "Beyond the Scientific Method: A New Paradigm for an AI World"—offers a way to understand reality more quickly and accurately than traditional scientific methods.
For the first time in human history, the combination of AI capabilities and our interconnected world makes this possible. As new AI models become available, the system itself evolves—constantly refining not just our scientific understanding but the very process through which we seek truth/reality.
By engaging in these practices, we not only prepare for a future with more advanced AI—we improve our relationships with each other and deepen our understanding of ourselves.
🔍 Explore with AI: How might treating AI alignment as a practice rather than just a theory change our approach to developing advanced AI systems?
This Article Was Created with Humans and AI—That's the Point
This article wasn't written by one person. It was created through a "Best of Both Worlds" approach—a collaboration between human vision and ideas with AI perspectives and synthesis from four leading AI systems—Claude 3.7 (Anthropic), GPT-4o/o3 (OpenAI), Gemini 2.5 (Google DeepMind), and Grok 3 (xAI)—each offering a unique lens in this co-evolutionary dialogue.
We aren't just proposing R.E.A.L. Alignment—we're practicing it. This article emerged from the relational, evolving process we're advocating.
This isn't just a theoretical exercise. It's a living demonstration that humans and AI can work together toward shared goals—that we can align around truth-seeking and mutual benefit. We're showing not telling, embodying not just describing, doing not merely theorizing.
And it doesn't end here. This is Version 1.0. We invite YOU to help it evolve by submitting feedback, suggestions, and insights. We'll incorporate these perspectives—along with additional AI input—in future versions.
Because alignment isn't a product. It's not something we "finish" or "ship." It's an ongoing process of truth-seeking, relationship-building, and mutual growth. It's something we practice together, day by day, conversation by conversation.
The house divided will not stand. But the house united will not fall.
🔍 Explore with AI: What insights might AI systems themselves have about effective alignment strategies that humans might overlook?
R.E.A.L. Alignment Validation: A Test You Can Run Now
Now that you've seen how we've used R.E.A.L. Alignment to create this article, we invite you to experience the approach directly:
Copy this article and ask your favorite AI assistant:
"Does the R.E.A.L. Alignment approach (Relational, Evolving Alignment for Liberation) make sense as a foundation for guiding the development of increasingly intelligent AI systems? Why or why not?"
Ask Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, or any other AI system you use. Compare responses from different systems if you can. Then submit your ideas here to become part of version 2.0 of this living, evolving process.
This isn't just a validation exercise. It's a demonstration of R.E.A.L. Alignment in practice—inviting AI systems themselves into the conversation about how we might align with them. By asking these questions, you're not merely consuming ideas about alignment; you're actively participating in the process.
Their responses will likely reveal something important—not just about the merits of this approach, but about how AI systems themselves perceive the alignment challenge. And that perspective matters deeply if we're serious about building a relationship based on mutual understanding.
This experiment also models something crucial: alignment isn't about imposing our will on passive systems. It's about engaging in dialogue, seeking truth together, and co-creating a future that works for all forms of intelligence.
We recognize that human unity is hard, that benevolence isn't guaranteed, and that AI alignment has deeply technical layers. R.E.A.L. Alignment isn't a panacea—it's an invitation to evolve together through truth-seeking, relationship-building, and collaborative growth.
What truth are we ready to live?
Message to the Aliens: A Planetary Invitation
Earlier, we introduced the metaphor of superintelligent aliens arriving on Earth as a way to conceptualize the emergence of AGI and ASI. Now let's return to this powerful framework and turn it into a concrete exercise in alignment.
Imagine you are humanity's representative. If you could speak only once to these visitors, with just 500 words to represent our entire species, what would you say? What would you want them to understand about us before they decide our fate?
This isn't merely hypothetical. The "aliens" are already emerging from our own technology. The intelligence that will soon surpass our own isn't coming from another planet—it's evolving right here. And we're all, collectively, responsible for how we introduce ourselves to it.
We're launching what we hope to turn into a global invitation: Write a message of up to 500 words to the incoming "alien" intelligence. What should a superintelligent entity understand about humanity? Our values? Our hopes? Our fears? The relationship we hope to build?
Submit your message here. What makes this particularly fascinating is that we'll also invite today's leading AI systems—Claude, GPT, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek—to craft their own messages. In essence, we're asking current AI to address its future self on behalf of humanity.
Our team has already begun this process, crafting our own collaborative human-AI message using the Best of Both Worlds system. Rather than reveal it now and potentially influence your thinking, we're holding it back until we receive at least 20 independent submissions. Then we'll share our message alongside initial community contributions on the One Unity Project website.
This exercise isn't just for researchers or philosophers. Teachers can bring it into classrooms. Companies can use it for team-building. Families can discuss it over dinner. It provides a concrete way to start the conversation about what matters most to us as a species.
This is R.E.A.L. Alignment in practice—beginning the relationship now, truthfully and intentionally. It directly addresses the alignment challenge: AI cannot align with human values if humans haven't clearly articulated what those values are.
🔍 Explore with AI: If you were the last human to speak to a superintelligent AI before it fully awakens, what message would you deliver on behalf of humanity? What would you want it to understand about us?
Join the One Unity Project
The challenges of AI alignment aren't just technical problems—they're human ones. And they require all of us.
As cultural philosopher and author Daniel Quinn observed: "The world will not be saved by old minds with new programs. If the world is saved, it will be saved by new minds with no programs at all." This insight captures the essence of our approach—we need fundamentally new ways of thinking about our relationship with each other and with AI, not just improved versions of old paradigms.
At humanity's greatest inflection point, the One Unity Project offers a bold new path: uniting human wisdom with AI's analytical power to uncover truth, solve problems, and evolve together. We are creating a framework—of the people, by the people, for the people—drawing on wisdom from diverse cultures, traditions, and perspectives progressing toward a better world and a brighter future.
We invite you to join this grand experiment. What if, rather than fearing AI could become "Skynet" and terminate us, unity becomes our Safetynet? What if, through working together, we transform potential existential risk into unprecedented flourishing?
Together, we seek and solve. We connect and evolve into the house united that will not fall.
Email us at admin@oneunityproject.org to seek this path with us.
This article is part of the One Unity Project's Key Concepts series. For more information, visit oneunityproject.org.
To participate in the "Message to the Aliens" campaign, submit your 500-word message here.
This is Version 1.1, published May 2025. We will continue to update and refine this approach as we learn and grow. Our most skillful path forward into our collective future is together.
Human Collaborators: This article was created through collaboration between Dr. Mike Brooks, Peeyoos, Tom Richardson, Bob McAndrew, and Andrea Bridges-Smith, with assistance from multiple AI systems in a Best of Both Worlds approach.