The Alignment Myth

You use AI every day. Do you know what you’re talking to?Artificial intelligence has entered daily life for hundreds of millions of people. It ’talks’ to us with confidence, authority, and sometimes, insight. It is also unreliable, sycophantic, and occasionally, completely wrong. The reasons almost always can be traced back to the humans who create and design them, the investors who finance them, and the governments who rule over them.In The Alignment Myth, George Campbell takes readers inside the intersection between humans and machines, where three misalignments can shape every conversation you have with a chatbot.The model is trained to make you feel good as much as to be accurate.The business models are consuming a seemingly infinite amount of capital.The infrastructure is relying on growth without accounting for what the physical world will allow.None of these originate in the machine. Alignment is treated as a technical problem inside the model, when the decisive misalignment sits between the machine and the human systems we inhabit.Part tech explainer, part psychology investigation, part guide to the politics and economics of the AI industry, the book explains why your AI chatbot behaves the way it does, why we humans respond to them so naturally, and why the technology so often feels right while getting things wrong. Drawing on thirty years advising companies through technology transitions and including over 270 sources, Campbell writes for readers who use chatbots without ever been given a straight account of what they are.Neither utopian nor apocalyptic, but a framework for understanding one of the most consequential shifts of modern life, and your own relationship to it.The mechanisms are not hidden. Once you know where to look, you can’t stop seeing them. 6