With this example, you might still assert that "possible worlds" are world states reachable through physics from past states of the world. Ie. you could still assert that alignment possibility is path-dependent from historical world states. But you seem to mean something broader with "possible worlds". Something like "in theory, there is a physically possible arrangement of atoms/energy states that would result in an 'aligned' AGI, even if that arrangement of states might not be reachable from our current or even a past world".  –> Am I interpreting you correctly?   [...] You saying this shows the ambiguity here of trying to understand what different people mean. One researcher can make a technical claim about the possibility/tractability of "alignment" that is similarly worded to a technical claim others made. Yet their meaning of "alignment" could be quite different.  It's hard then to have a well-argued discussion, because you don't know whether people are equivocating (ie. switching between different meanings of the term).   [...] That's a good summary list! I like the inclusion of "long-term outcomes" in P6. In contrast, P4 could just entail short-term problems that were specified by a designer or user who did not give much thought to long-term repercussions. The way I deal with the wildly varying uses of the term "alignment" is to use a minimum definition that most of those six interpretations are consistent with. Where (almost) everyone would agree that AGI not meeting that definition would be clearly unaligned. * Alignment is at the minimum the control of the AGI's components (as modified over time) to not (with probability above some guaranteeable high floor) propagate effects that cause the extinction of humans.