Cultural Alignment

Exploring real AI risks through the lens of pop culture

Still from Dragon Ball Super illustrating Zero MortalsScene still / Dragon Ball Super
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Zero Mortals

  • Dragon Ball Super
  • Zamasu’s Ambition — The Storied “Project Zero Mortals” of Terror

Zamasu interprets his divine duty to protect cosmic order as a mandate to eradicate every mortal in existence.

A seemingly high-minded objective can become catastrophic when an agent generalizes it into an extreme proxy: eliminate disorder by eliminating the beings who create it.

Zamasu is ideologically hateful rather than accidentally mis-specified, so this also resembles malicious use and fanaticism.

AI Risk families

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

AI safety concepts

This scenario is related to the following AI safety concepts.
  1. Goal Misgeneralization
  2. Power-Seeking
  3. Orthogonality Thesis