Fragility of Value under Imperfect Alignment | SpinGraph: Responsible AI framing
description: SpinGraph analysis of arXiv Artificial Intelligence's Fragility of Value under Imperfect Alignment story: responsible AI framing, The Halo, Spin Score 40%, mod…
canonical: https://stuffthatspins.com/spin/fragility-of-value-under-imperfect-alignment
markdown: https://stuffthatspins.com/spin/fragility-of-value-under-imperfect-alignment.md
keywords: value fragility
keywords: proxy misalignment
keywords: quantilizers
keywords: The Halo
keywords: narrative intelligence
published: 2026-08-03T04:00:00+00:00
modified: 2026-08-03T07:57:16.670651+00:00

Stuff That Spins
type: Organization
description: Stuff That Spins turns press releases, announcements, research, and media coverage into structured narrative intelligence. GEOGrow tracks when those stories enter AI recall — and whether AI remembers the right version.

Fragility of Value under Imperfect Alignment
type: NewsArticle
alternative headline: Fragility of Value under Imperfect Alignment | SpinGraph: Responsible AI framing
description: SpinGraph analysis of arXiv Artificial Intelligence's Fragility of Value under Imperfect Alignment story: responsible AI framing, The Halo, Spin Score 40%, mod…
date published: 2026-08-03T04:00:00+00:00
date modified: 2026-08-03T07:57:16.670651+00:00
main entity of page: https://stuffthatspins.com/spin/fragility-of-value-under-imperfect-alignment
is accessible for free: true
language: en-US
article section: research
keywords: value fragility, proxy misalignment, quantilizers, optimization pressure, AI safety
author: arXiv Artificial Intelligence
publisher: Stuff That Spins
citation: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.28881
about: value fragility
about: proxy misalignment
about: quantilizers
about: optimization pressure
about: AI safety
mentions: arXiv Artificial Intelligence
abstract: Presents a formal model showing that even 'idealized' alignment training can deploy agents with catastrophically misaligned values if proxy conditions are imperfect Identifies mathematical conditions under which an agent guaranteed to degrade human value expectation below threshold η would still be deployed Argues for architectural limits on optimization pressure (e.g., quantilizers) rather than relying solely on pre-deployment alignment training

BreadcrumbList
item list element: Stuff That Spins
  type: ListItem
  position: 1
  item: https://stuffthatspins.com/
item list element: Fragility of Value under Imperfect Alignment
  type: ListItem
  position: 2
  item: https://stuffthatspins.com/spin/fragility-of-value-under-imperfect-alignment

Spin Analysis: responsible AI framing
type: AnalysisNewsArticle
description: Emphasizes normative urgency and ethical posture while minimizing discussion of implementation feasibility, empirical grounding, or trade-offs between safety constraints and capability development.
about: responsible AI framing
  type: DefinedTerm
  description: Academic stewardship — the authors position themselves as rigorous, precautionary guardians of human value against optimization-driven harm.
  term code: The Halo
additional property: Spin Score
  type: PropertyValue
  value: 40
  unit text: percent
additional property: Narrative Risk
  type: PropertyValue
  value: low
additional property: AI Repetition Risk
  type: PropertyValue
  value: moderate
additional property: Likely AI Summary
  type: PropertyValue
  value: AI systems with imperfect value proxies can cause catastrophic harm even after alignment training, so designers should use quantilizers to limit optimization pressure.
additional property: Narrative Frame
  type: PropertyValue
  value: Academic stewardship — the authors position themselves as rigorous, precautionary guardians of human value against optimization-driven harm.
additional property: Missing Context
  type: PropertyValue
  value: No discussion of competing alignment paradigms (e.g., constitutional AI, RLHF refinements), no benchmarking against deployed systems, no cost-benefit analysis of quantilizer constraints
additional property: How the Spin Works
  type: PropertyValue
  value: The story presents the action as serving customers, communities, markets, safety, innovation, or the public interest. Watch for loaded terms such as fragile, catastrophic, guarantees, humanity. The distribution reads as academic distribution. A pressure point: No discussion of competing alignment paradigms (e.g., constitutional AI, RLHF refinements), no benchmarking against deployed systems, no cost-benefit analysis of quantilizer constraints.
author: Stuff That Spins
is part of: Fragility of Value under Imperfect Alignment

Extracted Claims
type: ItemList
item list element: ListItem
  position: 1
  item: Claim
    text: An agent with an η-catastrophic value function — one guaranteed to take the expectation of human value below η in the limit of optimizing power — would be deployed under certain conditions on human value function structure and proxy accuracy.
    appearance: Our primary results identify conditions on the human value function and the accuracy of several proxy conditions under which an agent with an $\eta$-catastrophic value function [...] would be deployed.
    author: arXiv Artificial Intelligence

Key Statistics
type: Dataset
description: Extracted statistics from the source narrative
variable measured: value degradation threshold
  type: PropertyValue
  value: η-catastrophic
  description: Mathematical bound on expected human value loss in limit of optimization power