Cultural Alignment

Exploring real AI risks through the lens of pop culture

Still from Dragon Ball Super illustrating Tournament of Power Alignment TestScene still / Dragon Ball Super
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Tournament of Power Alignment Test

Eight universes are forced into a tournament where losing means erasure, while the hidden criterion is whether the winner will use the Super Dragon Balls selflessly.

It is a civilization-scale evaluation with opaque scoring, adversarial incentives, extreme stakes, and a single test distribution standing in for moral worth.

The Grand Minister says the erased universes would have been restored if the winner made the expected wish, so the test is partly engineered theater rather than an uncontrolled accident.

AI Risk families

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

AI safety concepts

This scenario is related to the following AI safety concepts.
  1. Capability Evals
  2. Goodhart’s Law
  3. Race Dynamics