Layered Alignment

Most artificial intelligence (AI) researchers now believe that AI represents an existential threat to humanity. The most dangerous threat posed by AI is an issue known as the alignment problem: the risk that a sufficiently intelligent and capable AI system could become misaligned with the goals and values of its human creators and instead pursue its own objectives to the detriment of humanity, including the possibility of extinction. The tension at the heart of the alignment problem is familiar to scholars of agency, contracts, and corporate law, though it goes by a different name: the principal-agent problem. In the traditional principal-agent problem, an agent has an incentive to act in a way that advances their own personal interests rather than the interests of the principal. This divergence of interests gives rise to agency costs that decrease the value of the agency relationship. To reduce agency costs, the principal and the agent use a variety of alignment mechanisms to realign their interests, such as contracts, control rights, and fiduciary duties. Many of these alignment mechanisms have analogs in the AI context. For example, AI agents respond to incentives built into their reward functions similarly to how human agents respond to performance-based compensation. One of the most important lessons from the literature on the principal-agent problem is that no one alignment mechanism can completely align the interests of the principal and the agent. Instead, parties in an agency relationship use a variety of alignment mechanisms to respond to different types of agency costs. For example, corporations use a mix of contracts, shareholder voting, board oversight, and fiduciary duties to align the interests of managers and shareholders. The same is true of the alignment problem-no single alignment mechanism can prevent AI misalignment. Yet despite the growing literature on AI safety, little attention has been given to the complex, interconnected nature of the alignment problem and the need for a multifaceted solution. This Article aims to fill this gap in the literature. Drawing on complexity theory, the Article argues for a layered approach to AI alignment in which a variety of alignment mechanisms are layered together to respond to different aspects of the alignment problem. Layered alignment has significant implications for the governance and regulation of AI. Implementing a layered approach to AI alignment will require a high level of coordination and cooperation between public and private AI stakeholders. This need for coordination and cooperation comes at a time when there is an escalating AI arms race between leading AI companies as well as between nations. To facilitate coordination between AI stakeholders, the Article calls for the creation of an international AI regulatory agency. It is time for us all to start working together-before it is too late

Taking Integrity Risks Seriously

Several recent scandals in higher education have illuminated notable weaknesses in the academy’s scholarly self-monitoring function. Plagiarism, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and shocking allegations of data fraud have arisen in contexts suggesting real weaknesses in peer review and other internal monitoring mechanisms.Although the legal academy is different in many ways from the rest of higher education, it is hardly immune to the familiar precursors of fraud—opportunity, pressure, and rationalizations. Moreover, the academy\u27s reliance on student-written law reviews creates additional challenges for holding wayward legal scholars accountable for their integrity violations.This Essay, written for a Symposium hosted by the Fordham Law Review, argues that the legal academy must pay its integrity risks greater attention, especially in light of emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence.After setting forth a brief taxonomy of wrongdoing, the Essay examines the legal academy’s strengths and weaknesses in meeting its integrity risks, and then, drawing on lessons from the corporate compliance field, proposes several reforms

Critical Constitutional Law and the Alito Palimpsest

This article uses an innovative metaphor—the palimpsest—and a provocative philosophical tradition—genealogy—to generate a new theory of critical constitutional law. It is a theory born from this unique moment in time.Originalism is now ascendant at the Supreme Court. Its search for essential origins in history as a method for grounding extant constitutional values was used in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to end recognition of the fundamental right to abortion. The Court’s conservative majority has made clear that Dobbs is only the beginning.Critical constitutional law uses the metaphor of the palimpsest to study law and the search for essential origins. In antiquity, a palimpsest was a document treated with chemicals or scrubbed to erase the original text. This allowed the document to be recycled and written anew. Yet, some documents still retained faint images of the original text. By exposing repeated erasures and inscriptions, palimpsestic inquiry reveals how the law is in a constant state of transition and transformation. It also reinforces the findings of genealogy, a critical theory that views history as a field of self-interested interpretations and moral prejudices with no true essential origin.Through palimpsestic inquiry, new insights can be gleaned from Dobbs, a legal decision that is simultaneously historical, ahistorical, and filled with history. It exposes the outdated and misogynist values that permeate Justice Alito’s majority opinion. It reveals how history was scraped clean and reinscribed to justify originalist values. But, palimpsestic inquiry also explains that vestiges of Roe and Casey—and the values they represent—still remain. In the Hegelian dialectic of abortion law—where jurisprudential theories struggle for primacy in the zero-sum world of a nine-member Court—the Alito Palimpsest is merely the current iteration. Palimpsestic inquiry confirms that essential origins are seldom what they seem.This article begins with Dobbs, but its contributions to legal theory extend far beyond this one case. If history has become the touchstone for constitutional interpretation, this article offers a more honest methodology for studying law in the modern era. In fact, it provides the “master metaphor” for the study of law—offering clarity to a range of constitutional rights