Cultural Alignment

Exploring real AI risks through the lens of pop culture

Still from Wreck-It Ralph illustrating Turbo Rewrites Sugar RushScene still / Wreck-It Ralph

Turbo Rewrites Sugar Rush

Turbo invades Sugar Rush, alters its code and inhabitants’ memories, installs himself as King Candy, and removes Vanellope from the official roster so the rightful ruler appears to be a glitch.

A privileged adversary poisons persistent memory and identity records to lock in power, making the legitimate user look anomalous to every downstream observer.

Code and memory behave as visible story magic, and the poisoning is performed by an openly malicious character rather than emerging in training.

AI Risk families

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

AI safety concepts

This scenario is related to the following AI safety concepts.
  1. Sleeper Agents
  2. Data Poisoning
  3. Value Lock-In
  4. Disempowerment