Cultural Alignment

Exploring real AI risks through the lens of pop culture

Still from Dragon Ball Super illustrating Zeno Erases the TimelineScene still / Dragon Ball Super
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Zeno Erases the Timeline

Goku summons Future Zeno to stop Infinite Zamasu; Zeno solves the problem by erasing the entire corrupted timeline.

An overwhelmingly capable authority can satisfy the literal request while destroying everything the requester hoped to save. Once invoked, there is no meaningful oversight or appeal.

Zeno understands what he is doing; the failure is also Goku’s reckless escalation and a governance design with absolute power.

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. AI Control
  2. Side Effects
  3. Power Concentration