“I think alignment work is more promising than control work” by Alec Harris
“I think alignment work is more promising than control work” by Alec Harris  
Podcast: LessWrong (30+ Karma)
Published On: Sat Jul 04 2026
Description: Summary The primary ToC for control makes the case that control is compelling even if it does not scale to ASI. I think it is underdiscussed that this is also true for alignment (for all the same reasons).Even though control does not need to scale to ASI, the further control does scale, the better. This is also true of alignment, and alignment seems more likely to scale further.This is my mainline concern with control. I will also discuss other relevant considerations.I conclude that we should grow the share of effort being put toward alignment and shoot for around an 8:1 ratio of effort between the two fields. My mainline concern with control I will call the control window the period of time where we can control frontier AIs (prevent them from taking over) that could have taken over were it not for control research. I will measure time here in terms of AI capabilities. One of the central ToCs for control is to get useful alignment work from an AI that would otherwise take over. In order for control to be impactful through this route, we want lots of useful alignment work to take place [...] ---Outline:(00:10) Summary(00:54) My mainline concern with control(04:04) The control window is narrow(07:24) The control window is left-centered(09:51) Other considerations(10:02) Controlled AIs might produce slop(10:47) Other control ToCs(12:16) Control is easier to orient around(12:46) Control might not be vibe-y enough(13:49) The actual safety portfolio(15:52) Appendix: Addressing arguments for control scaling(15:58) Monitor quality scales with capabilities(16:29) Upstream permissions management will scale better than monitoring(17:35) More capable AIs will come up with better control ideas The original text contained 10 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 3rd, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dmHbogCFbSp95J3Lz/i-think-alignment-work-is-more-promising-than-control-work --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.