Inside The Fight To Align And Control Modern AI Systems

August 1, 2025, Opinion: "A common trope today is that artificial intelligence is too complex to understand and impossible to control. Some pioneering work on AI transparency challenges this assumption. Going deep into the mechanics of how these systems work, researchers are starting to understand how we can guide AI systems toward desired behaviors and outcomes. The recent discussion about “woke AI,” fueled by provisions in the U.S. AI Action Plan to insert an ideological perspective into federal government AI procurement guidelines, has brought the concept of AI alignment to light. AI alignment is the technical process of encoding goals and, with them, human values into AI models to make them reliable, safe and, ultimately, helpful. There are at least two important challenges to consider. From an ethical and moral perspective, who determines what is acceptable and what is good or bad? From a more mundane, technical perspective, the question is how to implement this encoding of values and goals into AI systems."