What Dean W. Ball thinks about AI alignment
Head of strategic futures at OpenAI, writing in his own name. Writes Hyperdimensional, a newsletter on emerging technology and the future of governance.
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Dean W. Ball did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
3 dated positions, 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Dean W. Ball has said — not written or endorsed by them.
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Their wordsBut alignment is no solution: it is an unsolved scientific and technical problem whose solutions—to the extent that we have them—cannot simply be imposed on every AI company operating on Earth. You should expect for highly capable, poorly aligned, self-sovereign agents to exist alongside you in the world.
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Their wordsSo many of the people who think about the governance of superintelligence, myself included, avoided that unpleasantness and bowed to the social pressure to self-censor.
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Their wordsFor the record, I do not think the end of human existence is likely, but I fully acknowledge there are ways in which the rise of self-sovereign AI could go very, very poorly for human beings.