AI alignment is a red herring

The best way to prevent a rogue AGI from processing the Earth into maximum paperclips is to unleash a second AGI that will work to stop it. The problem of ensuring that an AGI doesn’t mulch everything into paperclips by mistake is called alignment. AGI = artificial general intelligence, an AI that exceeds human capability. Alignment = “do what I mean not what I say,” e.g. the instruction “make as many paperclips as possible” (Wikipedia) should result in an efficient factory and does not reasonably mean “use all mass in the universe to do so and kill all humans that attempt to stop me” – even though, technically, that would achieve the goal. Also: being helpful; not being actively malicious; and so on and so forth. So alignment work seems existentially useful, correct? Even though it is hard. And a lot of effort goes towards “aligning” today’s AI (as a step toward’s aligning tomorrow’s AGI). https://simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/7/openai-timeline/ My contention is that alignment is a red…