The AI Alignment Forum was launched in 2018. Since then, several hundred researchers have contributed approximately two thousand posts and nine thousand comments. Nearing the third birthday of the Forum, we are publishing this updated and clarified FAQ.

*Minimalist, watercolor sketch of humanity spreading across the stars by VQGAN*

I have a practical question concerning a site feature.

Almost all of the Alignment Forum site features are shared with LessWrong.com; have a look at the LessWrong FAQ for questions concerning the Editor, Voting, Questions, Notifications & Subscriptions, Moderation, and more.

If you can’t easily find the answer there, ping us on Intercom (bottom right of screen) or email us at team@lesswrong.com

What is the AI Alignment Forum?

The Alignment Forum is a single online hub for researchers to discuss all ideas related to ensuring that transformatively powerful AIs are aligned with human values. Discussion ranges from technical models of agency to the strategic landscape, and everything in between.

Top voted posts include What failure looks like, Are we in an AI overhang?, and Embedded Agents. A list of the top posts of all time can be viewed here.

While direct participation in the Forum is limited to deeply established researchers in the field, we have designed it also as a place where up-and-coming researchers can get up to speed on the research paradigms and have pathways to participation too. See How can non-members participate in the Forum? below.

We hope that by being the foremost discussion platform and publication destination for AI Alignment discussion, the Forum will serve as the archive and library of the field. To find posts by sub-topic, view the AI section of the Concepts page.

Why was the Alignment Forum created?

Foremost, because misaligned powerful AIs may pose the greatest risk to our civilization that has ever arisen. The problem is of unknown (or at least unagreed upon) difficulty, and allowing the researchers in the field to better communicate and share their thoughts seems like one of the best things we could do to help the pre-paradigmatic field.

In the past, journals or conferences might have been the best methods for increasing discussion and collaboration, but in the current age we believe that a well-designed online forum with things like immediate publication, distributed rating of quality (i.e. “peer review...

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