During historical transitions, it is encouraging to remember that the future is not predetermined.

Many tech leaders now predict that a superintelligence will emerge - perhaps sooner than we expect. Will it serve or undermine human interests? And what role should we, as humans, play in shaping its emergence?

Sometimes it helps to step back and ask, “What exactly are we building - and why?”

We are not merely creating a science project or a new engine for corporate profit. We are reshaping the future for all human descendants.

We may be assembling a new kind of being - one that could out-think us, out-scale us - and ultimately, outlast us.

This essay invites today’s A.I. builders to create digital intelligence worth living beside, and the rest of us to voice the values we want it to reflect. The author’s humanist emphasis on values-based alignment is timely and relevant to an increasingly central theme: a growing desire to ground the development of powerful A.I. in collective ethical considerations, rather than leaving it solely to technological experts or market forces.

The technological and societal alignment of artificial intelligence is the defining challenge of our era. Success could offer tremendous opportunities and, more importantly, a future worth sharing. The stakes could not be higher.

OUR A.I. ALIGNMENT IMPERATIVE: CREATING A FUTURE WORTH SHARING

Christopher Hunt Robertson, M.Ed.

Historical Biographer - M.Ed. (Adult Education) from George Mason University

(Written with the support of advanced AI tools, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude)

Published in September 2025 at Academia.edu, LinkedIn.com, and Medium.com.

On 10-3-2025, presented by the American Humanist Association at TheHumanist.com.

Also available at Google Books (Books.Google.com).

“The alignment problem is essentially about how we get machines to behave in accordance with human norms and human values. … How can we be sure that they are learning the right things from the right examples, and that they will go on to actually behave in the way that we want and expect?”

Brian Christian, Author of “The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values”

Preface

We stand at a pivotal moment in history. On one side is the public, marveling at the artificial intelligence forming befor...

Posts

Wikitag Contributions

Comments