AI Alignment
The challenge of making AI systems reliably pursue what humans actually intend — not just what we literally asked for. It spans everyday product behavior (refusing harmful requests, following instructions faithfully) all the way to long-term safety research at labs like Anthropic and DeepMind. You meet alignment daily as a creator: content filters that block certain generations, models that decline copyrighted characters, safety guardrails around real people's faces. These are alignment decisions balancing usefulness against harm. Understanding that framing helps you work with the guardrails — and phrase requests within them — rather than fight them.