Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Maddy Muscari
pretalx.northbaypython.org/nbpy-2025/talk/W7XXBA
Remember gamergate? The phrase "It's about ethics in AI alignment" should be a joke—but it's not. AI alignment is shaping who gets to speak, what gets remembered and how truth is defined.
Application developers, not AI researchers, are the ones implementing these systems—which means AI governance isn’t just a policy problem; it’s a codebase and product problem.
This talk deconstructs alignment through a lens of control:
- How authoritarian data controls like constitutional classifiers and red-team RLHF training are damaging reasoning models.
- The "slippery slope" of allowing these kinds of classifiers to find their way into human communications
- Why AI alignment is not just about safety—it’s about deciding who gets to define epistemic reality.
- How engineers can identify, challenge, and counteract AI-mediated censorship in the tools they build.
If alignment becomes invisible, it becomes unchallengeable. If practitioners don’t resist now, AI won’t just shape knowledge—it will shape what can even be thought.
Key Takeaways:
✔ Understand how alignment architectures are being adapted for human speech control.
✔ Recognize when AI alignment becomes silent censorship.
✔ Resist epistemic capture by designing systems that preserve interpretability and agency.
Sat Apr 26 14:15:00 2025 at Reis River Ranch
Produced by NDV: youtube.com/channel/UCQ7dFBzZGlBvtU2hCecsBBg?sub_confirmation=1
Maddy Muscari
pretalx.northbaypython.org/nbpy-2025/talk/W7XXBA
Remember gamergate? The phrase "It's about ethics in AI alignment" should be a joke—but it's not. AI alignment is shaping who gets to speak, what gets remembered and how truth is defined.
Application developers, not AI researchers, are the ones implementing these systems—which means AI governance isn’t just a policy problem; it’s a codebase and product problem.
This talk deconstructs alignment through a lens of control:
- How authoritarian data controls like constitutional classifiers and red-team RLHF training are damaging reasoning models.
- The "slippery slope" of allowing these kinds of classifiers to find their way into human communications
- Why AI alignment is not just about safety—it’s about deciding who gets to define epistemic reality.
- How engineers can identify, challenge, and counteract AI-mediated censorship in the tools they build.
If alignment becomes invisible, it becomes unchallengeable. If practitioners don’t resist now, AI won’t just shape knowledge—it will shape what can even be thought.
Key Takeaways:
✔ Understand how alignment architectures are being adapted for human speech control.
✔ Recognize when AI alignment becomes silent censorship.
✔ Resist epistemic capture by designing systems that preserve interpretability and agency.
Sat Apr 26 14:15:00 2025 at Reis River Ranch
Produced by NDV: youtube.com/channel/UCQ7dFBzZGlBvtU2hCecsBBg?sub_confirmation=1
