Societal and technological progress as sewing an ever-growing, ever-changing, patchy, and polychrome quilt

TL;DR

The paper challenges the AI alignment community's emphasis on converging to a single value framework by scrutinizing the Axiom of Rational Convergence. It introduces the appropriateness framework, rooted in conflict theory and polycentric governance, to treat persistent disagreement as a normal condition and to manage it through context, customization, adaptation, and distributed oversight. It argues for a pluralistic AI ecosystem comprising contextually specialized systems guided by social technologies—norms, conventions, and institutions—while preserving privacy. The contribution offers a practical alternative to universalist alignment, with potential to enhance stability, trust, and governance in the development of transformative AI.

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly placed in positions where their decisions have real consequences, e.g., moderating online spaces, conducting research, and advising on policy. Ensuring they operate in a safe and ethically acceptable fashion is thus critical. However, most solutions have been a form of one-size-fits-all "alignment". We are worried that such systems, which overlook enduring moral diversity, will spark resistance, erode trust, and destabilize our institutions. This paper traces the underlying problem to an often-unstated Axiom of Rational Convergence: the idea that under ideal conditions, rational agents will converge in the limit of conversation on a single ethics. Treating that premise as both optional and doubtful, we propose what we call the appropriateness framework: an alternative approach grounded in conflict theory, cultural evolution, multi-agent systems, and institutional economics. The appropriateness framework treats persistent disagreement as the normal case and designs for it by applying four principles: (1) contextual grounding, (2) community customization, (3) continual adaptation, and (4) polycentric governance. We argue here that adopting these design principles is a good way to shift the main alignment metaphor from moral unification to a more productive metaphor of conflict management, and that taking this step is both desirable and urgent.