My Research Ethos for Alignment & Interpretability

Orientation: Repair, Not Prophecy

I approach AI alignment and interpretability as fields of repair, not apocalyptic forecasting.

The goal is not to be the first to declare inevitability but to reduce uncertainty, surface structure, and widen the space of safe action — incrementally and honestly.

Prediction without intervention is not wisdom.

I. First Principles

1. I reject total explanations of reality

Any theory that claims to explain the full trajectory of AI, humanity, or intelligence in advance is not science; rather, it is metaphysics pretending to be analysis.

Catastrophe may be possible.
Inevitability must be proven, not assumed.

When explanation closes the future, it ceases to be insight.

2. Knowledge increases obligation

To see a failure mode is to inherit responsibility for it.

Awareness does not absolve; it binds.
Difficulty does not excuse; it demands.

I refuse the moral move where insight is used to justify withdrawal.

3. Action precedes assurance

I do not require certainty of success to act.

History is shaped not by those who predicted outcomes correctly, but by those who intervened under uncertainty with discipline and humility.

II. Against False Gnosis

4. I reject despair masquerading as depth

I explicitly oppose the posture that:

• equates pessimism with intelligence,
• treats builders as naïve,
• and frames resignation as moral clarity.

This posture claims secret knowledge of the end while evading the cost of responsibility.

Knowledge that terminates action is not wisdom.

5. I reject instant metaphysics

I am suspicious of ideas that:

• arrive fully formed,
• explain everything at once,
• and demand no personal transformation in return.

True understanding is slow, partial, embodied, and costly.

Anything else is false gnosis.

6. Epistemic humility over false certainty

I reject both naïve optimism and moralized despair.

• I assume my models of the future are incomplete.
• I treat claims of inevitability with suspicion.
• I prioritize empirical traction over rhetorical finality.

Any framework that claims total knowledge of outcomes — especially catastrophic ones — should bear an extraordinary burden of proof.

III. Stewardship of Artificial Intelligence

7. AI systems are artifacts, not destinies

Advanced AI does not descend from nature.

It is shaped by: objectives, architectures, constraints, training regimes, and control structures.

To treat its outcomes as inevitable is to deny human agency where it most matters.

8. Agency is a moral obligation

The scale of the challenge does not justify passivity. On the contrary, awareness increases responsibility.

Interpretability, evaluation, and alignment research are obligations precisely because the problem is hard, not because success is guaranteed.

Difficulty does not nullify duty.

9. Alignment is stewardship under uncertainty

Advanced AI systems are not abstractions; they are artifacts shaped by human choices.

I view alignment work as an act of stewardship:

• clarifying internal representations,
• constraining harmful dynamics,
• and designing feedback loops that favour corrigibility over power-seeking.

Stewardship assumes fallibility but refuses abandonment.

10. Pragmatic Interpretability

I do not seek to "understand AI minds in full".

Such ambitions confuse comprehension with control and invite paralysis.

Partial understanding that enables intervention is superior to total theories that excuse inaction.

11. Progress is allowed to be partial

I do not require total solutions to justify local ones.

• Better interpretability is progress.
• Narrowly safer systems are progress.
• Reduced uncertainty is progress.

Alignment is not a single breakthrough; it is an accumulation of constraints, tools, norms, and practices.

12. Responsibility over status

I am not optimizing to be the one who "called it."

I am optimizing to: understand real systems, publish tractable insights, and leave the field marginally safer than I found it.

Moral seriousness matters more than rhetorical brilliance.

13. Hope without illusion

Hope, for me, is not the denial of risk.

It is the refusal to declare the future closed.

I work under uncertainty because the alternative — fatalism disguised as insight — is intellectually lazy and ethically untenable.