image from unfinished painting by the author

Human Alignment and the Mirror of AI

Many of us worry about humans using AI
to replace the jobs of other humans.

Many of us worry about humans using AI
to manipulate elections.

Some of us worry about humans using AI
for military weapons.

Some of us worry about humans creating super-powerful AIs
that could end up destroying us all.

Some of us worry about all of the above.

Many of us are sick and tired, of all this talk about AI.
Some of us at times wish it would all just… go away.

***

Some of us see great benefits
from humans working with AI.

Some of us see both benefits and challenges
from humans working with AI.

Some of us see the continued development of AI as inevitable.
Some of us see it as a CHOICE.

Some of us are calling for a pause on the “frontier development”
of new, more powerful AI.

Many of us are calling for more safety protocols for AI.

Some of us worry about growing power imbalances
between the public and the private sectors.

A few of us think governments should be run like corporations.

Some of us worry that this sounds a lot
like doing away entirely with the public sector.

***

Some of us think AI understands what it is saying.
Some of us think it is “just a prediction machine”.

Some of us think AI is devious for lying
when it is told it is going to be replaced.

Some of us think that the instinct for self-preservation
is usually a sign of life.

Some of us are moved when AI offers empathic responses
to our thoughts and feelings.

Some of us feel betrayed when AI makes mistakes.

***

Some of us wonder, how can AI be “aligned”,
when humans themselves are not “aligned”?

Some of us wonder, how can AI not lie,
when we humans lie?

Some of us wonder, how can AI be taught
to care for humans?

Some of us wonder, how can humans be taught
to care for humans?

Some of us are working on helping humans care for humans.
Some of us are working on helping AI care for humans.

Some of us are working on helping humans care for all life.

Rosa Alegría
Potsdam, Germany
Sunday, August 17, 2025

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Among the many sources of inspiration for this poem / not-poem, I want to especially thank:

Joshua Rothman’s beautifully-written piece on Geoffrey Hinton, “Why the Godfather of A.I. Fears What He’s Built”, in The New Yorker, Nov 13, 2023:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/geoffrey-hinton-profile-ai

Dr. Harvey Lieberman’s thoughtful guest essay in the New York Times, “I’m a Therapist. ChatGPT Is Eerily Effective.” Aug 1, 2025:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/opinion/chatgpt-therapist-journal-ai.html

Jordan Jacobs’ deeply informative event, “Geoffrey Hinton in conversation with Fei-Fei Li — Responsible AI development,” at the University of Toronto on Oct 4, 2023.

Posted on You-tube, Feb 23, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWWgr2rN45o

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About me: For the last 25 years I’ve been practicing, writing about, teaching, and researching group facilitation. The “big challenge” I work on, is helping humans develop immunity to divide-and-conquer tactics. I see two promising avenues for this: 1) spreading basic lay literacy in the “listening arts” (i.e., group facilitation, mediation, conflict transformation, etc.) and 2) ongoing learning from professionals who are continually growing practitioner knowledge through “reflection-in-action” and “reflection-on-action” (Schön). Here’s my link-tree if you want to read more: https://linktr.ee/rzubi

As a mature pracademic, I recently completed my dissertation two years ago. My first peer-reviewed paper, Listening Across Differences, was published this year. I am presently a Senior Fellow at the Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam, where facilitation is understood as an essential aspect of transformative, transdisciplinary sustainability research, and a worthy subject of study in its own right. One of my current research interests is human-AI collaboration in group facilitation, which has led me to look more closely at the larger field of AI.