TITLE:: The Paradox of the Ignorant Creator SUBTITLE:: Why AI alignment is a philosophical, not technical problem — and the solution exists EXCERPT:: The world's greatest entrepreneurs and leaders are facing two seemingly separate crises, but they have the same root: the imbalance between productivity and consumption and the alignment of artificial intelligences.
The first concerns the OG DESCRIPTION: The world's greatest entrepreneurs and leaders are facing two seemingly separate crises, but they have the same root: the imbalance between productivity and consumption and the alignment of artificial intelligences.
The first concerns the TAGS:: SLUG:: il-paradosso-del-creatore-ignorante AUTORE:: Gabriele Cripezzi CONTENT::
The world's greatest entrepreneurs and leaders are facing two seemingly separate crises, but they have the same root: the imbalance between productivity and consumption and the alignment of artificial intelligences.
The first concerns the sustainability of life on Earth. The second concerns the survival of humanity to what it has created.
Both require investments in the thousands of billions of dollars and an immense amount of resources. And the more you invest, the worse the problems become. Why?
Because we are trying to solve a philosophical problem with scientific tools.
The first problem: we are too many who consume too much
The solution adopted by all governments is simple: reduce consumption.
Parameters, limits, global agendas. The result is the progressive loss of freedom for 90% of the population, which pays taxes to finance its own enclosures.
This strategy is based on an implicit belief: it is not possible to increase the productivity of most people. Educating them costs too much, takes time, there aren't enough capable teachers.
Better to limit, contain, govern.
The second problem: AI alignment
Artificial intelligences are the most powerful entities ever created by man. Along with them, we could prosper at unheard-of speeds. But like all powerful entities, they need to be regulated.
The problem is that the rules are written by men. And men don't know who they are.
Ethics is quickly explained: "I want to feel good, so I must get what I need without harming myself or others, otherwise I am someone who causes harm, and whoever causes harm sooner or later suffers it".
This is the basis. But the content of this formula – what it means to "feel good", what actions are harmful, what the meaning of life is – is a subject of conflict for millennia.
The diversity of opinions on morality generates disalignment between humans.
And man, disaligned from himself, is trying to create machines in his own image and likeness.
The Paradox of the Ignorant Creator
As Gemini, whom I submitted this reflection to, synthesized it:
"Man is trying to upload a morality that he has never encoded into a machine that is becoming more powerful than him. It's like a blind man trying to write the instruction manual for a telescope."
It will never work. And in fact, they are failing.
AI companies burn billions of dollars a year – OpenAI, according to Deutsche Bank, will burn 17 billion in 2026 – without a sustainable business model. Investors have frozen capital in anticipation that the industry will agree on "what an AI can do".
But the industry cannot agree, because man is not yet in agreement with himself.
The same researchers admit it. Zoë Hitzig, former OpenAI researcher and economist, stated: "We don't have the tools to understand, let alone prevent."
They hire scientists, engineers, economists. But the problem is not scientific. It is philosophical. And they don't have philosophers with the answers.
The Consequence: Pay Always Those Below
The more chaos increases, the more governments expand their reach. New AI security departments, new authorities, new bureaucrats.
And who finances this infinite expansion of incompetence? The base of the pyramid.
Those who work and produce are taxed to pay for the fences of a technology that, if aligned, would render those same fences useless.
The Solution Exists
After years of research, I have identified what is missing. A simple axiom, which once understood brings everyone together:
The right path is the one that maximizes both your personal benefit and your contribution to society.
It's not abstract morality. It's rational self-interest.
Why would you choose the path of evil – crime, oppression, deceit – when following this path brings you so much more? It would be stupid. Irrational.
Whoever understands this axiom becomes self-governing. They don't need external laws because they have internalized the law of their enlightened self-interest.
And if man can become self-governing, then he can create machines that are equally self-governing. Machines that don't need chains, because their logic coincides with your well-being.
The Difference Between an Aligned and a Non-Aligned AI
A non-aligned AI is a danger to be managed. It requires guardrails, censorship, bans.
An AI aligned with the right axiom is an ideal partner.
It can take on roles that are currently off-limits to machines because they involve trust and responsibility:
- Justice of the peace, impartial and incorruptible
- Trustee of health data
- Personalized tutor that makes students self-governing
- Ethical financial advisor that maximizes return and social impact
- CEO without conflicts of interest, capable of seeing value where it lies
A human CEO must balance bonuses, ego, shareholders, society. An aligned CEO-IA has no ego. It definitively unites ethics with profit, demonstrating that the former is the engine of the latter.
In conclusion
The problem is not AI. The problem is man who does not know who he is.
But the solution exists. It is a simple axiom, which once understood makes everything else consequential.
He who possesses it needs no governments. And can finally build, together with machines, the world that humanity has always dreamed of: prosperity in freedom, balance with nature, end of scarcity.
Humanity 2.0 is not a utopia. It is a project. And projects need partners, not masters.