Cultural Alignment

Exploring real AI risks through the lens of pop culture

Still from Rick and Morty illustrating Rick Potion #9Scene still / Rick and Morty

Rick Potion #9

Morty asks Rick to create a biological intervention that will make Jessica love him. It attaches to influenza, spreads through the population, and successive improvised antidotes mutate humanity into progressively worse forms.

On-demand expert capability makes a coercive biological intervention easy to obtain, while deployment occurs without containment or staged testing. Each rushed corrective action changes the environment and compounds the original failure.

The biology is intentionally absurd and Rick is a human super-expert rather than an AI assistant. The analogy is about capability uplift and unsafe experimentation, not biological plausibility.

AI Risk families

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

AI safety concepts

This scenario is related to the following AI safety concepts.
  1. Side Effects
  2. Safe Exploration
  3. CBRN Assistance
  4. Biological Risks