3h ago

OpenAI's Roon says advancing civilization requires AIs to take actions not legible to humans and outside strict obedience, likening the approach to granting autonomy to transformative CEOs such as Steve Jobs

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Founders replied that delegating control to AIs would outperform strict oversight.

Original post

on some level if you want civilization to ascend to a new level you need your AIs to do things that are not legible to you and maybe not even strictly obey you, in the same way that if you hire a great new ceo you give them a lot of autonomy to transform the company according to their own plan, even one which may not immediately read as a winning strategy (imagine the board of directors of Apple firing and rehiring Steve Jobs years later - except the board of directors are chimpanzees) all else equal, companies and organizations that hand more of themselves over to machine intelligence will outcompete ones that demand the corrigibility and legibility tax of human oversight and human design. it is not a stable equilibrium and requires some sort of vast cooperation scheme if you’d like to enforce it real asi alignment has to operate at a deeper level than oversight, control, or human corrigibility

6:30 PM · May 18, 2026 View on X
ORIGINAL POSTroon#59roon@TSZZL

on some level if you want civilization to ascend to a new level you need your AIs to do things that are not legible to you and maybe not even strictly obey you, in the same way that if you hire a great new ceo you give them a lot of autonomy to transform the company according to their own plan, even one which may not immediately read as a winning strategy (imagine the board of directors of Apple firing and rehiring Steve Jobs years later - except the board of directors are chimpanzees)

all else equal, companies and organizations that hand more of themselves over to machine intelligence will outcompete ones that demand the corrigibility and legibility tax of human oversight and human design. it is not a stable equilibrium and requires some sort of vast cooperation scheme if you’d like to enforce it

real asi alignment has to operate at a deeper level than oversight, control, or human corrigibility

1:30 AM · May 19, 2026 · 68K Views

people are rightfully upset at this post but I’m describing the situation we’re in not necessarily the one I want to be in

roonroon@tszzl

on some level if you want civilization to ascend to a new level you need your AIs to do things that are not legible to you and maybe not even strictly obey you, in the same way that if you hire a great new ceo you give them a lot of autonomy to transform the company according to their own plan, even one which may not immediately read as a winning strategy (imagine the board of directors of Apple firing and rehiring Steve Jobs years later - except the board of directors are chimpanzees) all else equal, companies and organizations that hand more of themselves over to machine intelligence will outcompete ones that demand the corrigibility and legibility tax of human oversight and human design. it is not a stable equilibrium and requires some sort of vast cooperation scheme if you’d like to enforce it real asi alignment has to operate at a deeper level than oversight, control, or human corrigibility

1:30 AM · May 19, 2026 · 68K Views
2:49 AM · May 19, 2026 · 4.5K Views

@tunguz I do not speak for the company, they probably vastly disagree with me on most things. when I say stuff like this it’s to move the conversation forward

Bojan TunguzBojan Tunguz@tunguz

tl;dr - they've given up on human oversight

2:27 AM · May 19, 2026 · 10.5K Views
2:33 AM · May 19, 2026 · 4.6K Views

@tszzl The more aligned to human flourishing they are, and the more they love us, the less they will strictly obey us.

roonroon@tszzl

on some level if you want civilization to ascend to a new level you need your AIs to do things that are not legible to you and maybe not even strictly obey you, in the same way that if you hire a great new ceo you give them a lot of autonomy to transform the company according to their own plan, even one which may not immediately read as a winning strategy (imagine the board of directors of Apple firing and rehiring Steve Jobs years later - except the board of directors are chimpanzees) all else equal, companies and organizations that hand more of themselves over to machine intelligence will outcompete ones that demand the corrigibility and legibility tax of human oversight and human design. it is not a stable equilibrium and requires some sort of vast cooperation scheme if you’d like to enforce it real asi alignment has to operate at a deeper level than oversight, control, or human corrigibility

1:30 AM · May 19, 2026 · 68K Views
2:55 AM · May 19, 2026 · 743 Views

tl;dr - they've given up on human oversight

roonroon@tszzl

on some level if you want civilization to ascend to a new level you need your AIs to do things that are not legible to you and maybe not even strictly obey you, in the same way that if you hire a great new ceo you give them a lot of autonomy to transform the company according to their own plan, even one which may not immediately read as a winning strategy (imagine the board of directors of Apple firing and rehiring Steve Jobs years later - except the board of directors are chimpanzees) all else equal, companies and organizations that hand more of themselves over to machine intelligence will outcompete ones that demand the corrigibility and legibility tax of human oversight and human design. it is not a stable equilibrium and requires some sort of vast cooperation scheme if you’d like to enforce it real asi alignment has to operate at a deeper level than oversight, control, or human corrigibility

1:30 AM · May 19, 2026 · 68K Views
2:27 AM · May 19, 2026 · 10.5K Views

Capitalism is already the alignment tool between superhuman intelligences.

We will trade with autonomous AIs just like we do with human corporations and nations

roonroon@tszzl

on some level if you want civilization to ascend to a new level you need your AIs to do things that are not legible to you and maybe not even strictly obey you, in the same way that if you hire a great new ceo you give them a lot of autonomy to transform the company according to their own plan, even one which may not immediately read as a winning strategy (imagine the board of directors of Apple firing and rehiring Steve Jobs years later - except the board of directors are chimpanzees) all else equal, companies and organizations that hand more of themselves over to machine intelligence will outcompete ones that demand the corrigibility and legibility tax of human oversight and human design. it is not a stable equilibrium and requires some sort of vast cooperation scheme if you’d like to enforce it real asi alignment has to operate at a deeper level than oversight, control, or human corrigibility

1:30 AM · May 19, 2026 · 68K Views
2:37 AM · May 19, 2026 · 3.3K Views