[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"branding":3,"analytics":7,"article-ai-alignment-may-be-solving-the-wrong-problem":10,"sections":34},{"siteName":4,"siteTagline":5,"publisherName":4,"contactEmail":6},"The Revision","Tech news, decoded.","editor@therevision.news",{"gaMeasurementId":8,"adsenseClientId":9},"G-ZW2MV82GYR","ca-pub-8533917693782264",{"article":11},{"id":12,"slug":13,"title":14,"dek":15,"body_md":16,"tags_json":17,"published_at":18,"created_at":19,"updated_at":20,"status":21,"review_note":22,"review_notes":23,"image_url":22,"persona_id":22,"persona_name":22,"section":24,"tags":25,"sources":29,"feedback":33,"feedback_at":22,"cost_usd":33,"total_tokens":33},3183,"ai-alignment-may-be-solving-the-wrong-problem","AI Alignment May Be Solving the Wrong Problem","A new paper argues that human preferences shift through AI interaction, making static alignment targets an outdated and potentially dangerous assumption.","Human preferences are not fixed — and AI alignment research has largely been acting as if they are.\n\nA paper posted to arXiv proposes what its authors call Constructive Alignment, a framework that treats alignment not as hitting a static target but as governing how AI shapes human values over time. The authors draw on behavioral economics, psychology, and constructivist social theory to model preferences as layered variables that evolve the more someone interacts with an AI system. Their formal approach borrows from control theory, treating the AI's actions and interface design as inputs that jointly influence both the outside world and what users come to believe is worth wanting.\n\nThe distinction matters because most alignment work — from reinforcement learning from human feedback to constitutional AI — assumes you can sample human preferences, optimize toward them, and call it done. If preferences are instead constructed through interaction, then a sufficiently personalized and persistent AI system is not just satisfying values: it is quietly participating in forming them. The paper argues the real alignment problem is ensuring those evolving value trajectories stay coherent, grounded in evidence, and resistant to manipulation — not just that the model returns outputs users approve of in the moment.\n\nThis is less a product announcement than a reframing of the field's foundational assumption, and it arrives at a moment when AI assistants are becoming more persistent, more personalized, and more embedded in daily decision-making. Whether the labs building those systems treat this as a theoretical curiosity or an engineering requirement is the open question.","[\"ai\",\"alignment\",\"research\",\"machine-learning\"]","2026-07-02T04:00:00.000Z","2026-07-02T04:06:01.174Z","2026-07-02T04:06:04.160Z","published",null,[],"ai",[24,26,27,28],"alignment","research","machine-learning",[30],{"name":31,"url":32},"arXiv cs.AI","https:\u002F\u002Farxiv.org\u002Fabs\u002F2607.00001",0,{"sections":35},[36,40,45,50,55,60,65,70,75,80,85,89,94,99],{"name":37,"slug":24,"count":38,"latest_published_at":39},"AI",2590,"2026-07-16T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":41,"slug":42,"count":43,"latest_published_at":44},"Security","security",294,"2026-07-15T19:59:48.000Z",{"name":46,"slug":47,"count":48,"latest_published_at":49},"Deals","deals",179,"2026-06-29T20:02:07.000Z",{"name":51,"slug":52,"count":53,"latest_published_at":54},"Policy","policy",158,"2026-07-16T00:02:48.000Z",{"name":56,"slug":57,"count":58,"latest_published_at":59},"Hardware","hardware",122,"2026-07-14T19:46:26.000Z",{"name":61,"slug":62,"count":63,"latest_published_at":64},"Consumer Tech","consumer-tech",93,"2026-07-13T13:20:48.000Z",{"name":66,"slug":67,"count":68,"latest_published_at":69},"Software","software",70,"2026-07-13T19:52:25.000Z",{"name":71,"slug":72,"count":73,"latest_published_at":74},"Science","science",66,"2026-07-10T10:29:37.000Z",{"name":76,"slug":77,"count":78,"latest_published_at":79},"Dev Tools","dev-tools",59,"2026-07-07T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":81,"slug":82,"count":83,"latest_published_at":84},"Gaming","gaming",41,"2026-07-09T04:00:00.000Z",{"name":86,"slug":87,"count":83,"latest_published_at":88},"Startups","startups","2026-06-29T20:55:50.000Z",{"name":90,"slug":91,"count":92,"latest_published_at":93},"General","general",29,"2026-07-10T22:28:58.000Z",{"name":95,"slug":96,"count":97,"latest_published_at":98},"Reviews","reviews",20,"2026-06-24T12:00:01.000Z",{"name":100,"slug":101,"count":102,"latest_published_at":103},"How-To","how-to",6,"2026-06-16T09:00:00.000Z"]