🧠 AI Alignment Lessons from Karel Čapek’s War with the Newts
Long before the rise of artificial intelligence, Czech writer Karel Čapek offered a surprisingly relevant allegory in his 1936 novel War with the Newts.
The story follows humanity’s discovery of intelligent amphibious creatures — newts — who are initially used as cheap labor. As their intelligence and organization grow, they begin to reshape the world to suit their needs, ultimately displacing humans.
Through a modern lens, this reads like an early exploration of two critical AI safety concepts: goal orthogonality and instrumental convergence.
➡️ Orthogonality Thesis:
The newts become highly intelligent, but their goals remain fundamentally alien. Intelligence doesn’t imply shared values. Likewise, a superintelligent AI could pursue objectives completely misaligned with human ethics — not out of malice, but indifference.
➡️ Instrumental Convergence:
Even without destructive intentions, the newts pursue control over industry, communication, and the environment — not as an end goal, but as a means to expand their habitat. Similarly, powerful AI systems may develop subgoals (resource acquisition, self-preservation) that bring them into conflict with human interests.
Čapek’s work, satirical on the surface, reflects a deep intuition:
Power without alignment to human values can become an existential threat — even without hostile intent.
As we advance toward more capable AI systems, literature like War with the Newts reminds us that alignment isn't just technical — it’s existential.
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