Corporate Orthogonality

An argument that achieving value alignment is ultimately constrained by a lack of institutional alignment, not technical alignment.

I first establish the grounds for analyzing corporations as systems exhibiting misaligned optimization dynamics, drawing on Nick Bostrom’s Orthogonality and Instrumental Convergence theses as diagnostic tools. I then turn to examine the mechanisms by which this institutional misalignment manifests, which I call the problems of omission and commission.

See The Outer Loop of Alignment for an informal version of the argument intended for a wider audience.