Alignment

Alignment is the effort to make an AI system’s behavior accord with specified human intentions, values, rules, or objectives.

Plan for this page

Understand one concept in plain language and connect it to nearby ideas.

You will leave with: It can involve training, feedback, instructions, constraints, evaluation, monitoring, institutions, and human control. Which people’s values, how conflicts are resolved, and how behavior is measured are substantive governance questions.
Time: 3–8 min
Before you begin: No prerequisite. Keep one real example in mind.
Do this now: Read the explanation, then compare the example with the common misunderstanding.

Prepared next stepStudy control and social context

AlignmentAlignment is the effort to make an AI system’s behavior accord with specified human intentions, values, rules, or objectives.

Model
Guardrail
Fairness

Plain explanation

It can involve training, feedback, instructions, constraints, evaluation, monitoring, institutions, and human control. Which people’s values, how conflicts are resolved, and how behavior is measured are substantive governance questions.

Example

A medical drafting system is designed to avoid inventing citations, preserve uncertainty, protect patient data, and require clinician approval.

Why it matters

A system can optimize the wrong proxy, misunderstand intent, or behave differently in new conditions. Alignment is ongoing and contextual, not a one-time label.

Common misunderstanding

Misconception: an aligned model always agrees with the user. Correction: responsible behavior may require refusing, questioning, escalating, or respecting others’ rights and higher-level rules.

Related concepts

Follow relationships, not only the alphabet

ModelA model is a learned or designed representation that maps inputs to outputs for a defined task or family of tasks.GuardrailA guardrail is a preventive, detective, or corrective control intended to keep system behavior within defined boundaries.FairnessFairness is the context-dependent quality of treating people or groups according to justified criteria, rights, needs, and procedures.

Study control and social context

Sources and scope

What supports this object

Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0)U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology

Supports explicit objectives, governance, measurement and contextual risk management; it does not establish one universal definition or solution for alignment.

Open source

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