The best way to prevent a rogue AGI from processing the Earth into maximum paperclips is to unleash a second AGI that will work to stop it.
The problem of ensuring that an AGI doesn’t mulch everything into paperclips by mistake is called alignment.
AGI = artificial general intelligence, an AI that exceeds human capability.
Alignment = “do what I mean not what I say,” e.g. the instruction “ make as many paperclips as possible ” (Wikipedia) should result in an efficient factory and does not reasonably mean “use all mass in the universe to do so and kill all humans that attempt to stop me” – even though, technically, that would achieve the goal.
Also: being helpful; not being actively malicious; and so on and so forth.
So alignment work seems existentially useful, correct? Even though it is hard. And a lot of effort goes towards “aligning” today’s AI (as a step toward’s aligning tomorrow’s AGI).
https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/7/openai-timeline/
My contention is that alignment is a red herring, and perhaps we shouldn’t bother working on it so hard.
An unsubstantiated hunch:
I think we focus so much on alignment because everyone know’s Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics and his robots (as an early instance of human-like AI) were crazy popular.
The First Law. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
The Second Law. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
The Third Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Asimov later added a “zeroth law”: "A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."
These laws are totally alignment guardrails.
Now there are all kinds of difficulties already: what if I ask for something which is good for me (pleasurable) in the short term, but not in the long term? I might not know or I might be