When is misalignment just a bug?

According to LessWrong, AI researcher Yoav Hollander argues that many alignment failures are really just engineering bugs. Drawing on decades of chip verification methodology, Hollander proposes treating alignment as a verification and specification problem. He illustrates with a hierarchical example: a base AI model adapted into a medical system, then customized by a hospital. Each layer adds specifics and detail. His core argument: most deployed AI misalignments stem from specification failures—we didn't clearly articulate what we wanted, or training data confused our actual intent with a proxy. Clearing these engineering-level bugs isn't alignment solved, Hollander argues, but it's necessary groundwork that makes the genuinely dangerous problem—strategic deception—easier to isolate and study.

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