Cultural Alignment

Exploring real AI risks through the lens of pop culture

Still from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners illustrating Cyberpsychosis Tripwires IgnoredScene still / Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Cyberpsychosis Tripwires Ignored

Maine's blackouts, hallucinations, aggression, and accidental injury of Kiwi are treated as manageable until he remains deployed, loses control in a firefight, and inadvertently kills Dorio.

The warning signals are observable, repeated, and worsening, but loyalty and mission pressure prevent a safe interruption. It shows that monitoring only helps when tripwires trigger an enforceable incident-response action.

Cyberpsychosis is fictional and should not be used to equate real mental illness with defective AI; the useful analogy is the ignored incident-response evidence.

AI Risk families

This scenario is an example of the following types of AI risk.
  1. Accidents
  2. Security

AI safety concepts

This scenario is related to the following AI safety concepts.
  1. Deployment Safety
  2. Side Effects
  3. Runtime Monitoring
  4. Corrigibility