Since the dawn of civilization, technological progress has profoundly changed our daily lives and our societies. Today we face the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) and its growing influence.
AI differs from every technology before it in that it is directed toward ever greater autonomy. AI can learn from data on its own, adapt to new situations, and achieve better results. It can imitate human creativity to produce new things, and even reach achievements that humans have never reached before. As its autonomy grows, AI can carry out more complex tasks with less human involvement. Because such technology creates enormous value and benefit for society, AI will rapidly permeate every area of human activity and become an indispensable and inseparable part of society.
However, AI’s autonomy is inextricably linked with problems. An AI acting autonomously may act against human intentions, or move beyond human control. For human society to keep progressing, it is therefore imperative that AI systems behave in accordance with the purposes, preferences, or ethical principles that humans intend. AI alignment is the technological domain that sets out to meet this need.
AI alignment requires a multifaceted understanding and insight that reaches beyond AI technology itself to its interactions with humans, society, and the environment that surrounds them. To realize AI alignment as concrete design, and to connect it to effective practice, we must advance it as a whole by forming a network that brings together researchers and engineers from many fields as well as stakeholders across society.
To promote AI alignment research and its practice, we have established the AI Alignment Network, a general incorporated association. Our primary activity is to cultivate and support AI alignment researchers. In the face of a shortage of researchers both in Japan and abroad, we strengthen the field by advancing education and research. We also work to help society as a whole understand the importance of AI alignment and to create shared understanding and values. Through dialogue with a wide range of stakeholders, we lay the foundations of this new field.
Advancing AI alignment research through an international network based in Japan has great value: it brings a new perspective, different from Western-centered views. Through these activities, we seek a future in which AI and human society live in harmony and flourish together. We hope that this work will serve as a source of strength for all of us as we join together to face the important challenges ahead.
February 2024
The co-founders