Alignment, in the context of artificial intelligence, means ensuring that AI systems are designed so that their goals and actions are consistent with the values and interests of humanity.
An AI that is not properly aligned could pursue goals that are logical from its programming, but have a negative impact on humanity.
This will be particularly important as AI systems become autonomous, as is envisioned for “AI agents”. Nevertheless, alignment is already an important topic today, because the basics must be right from the start, and problems such as bias and other distortions in the data set can have a negative impact today as well.