Alignment Theater

Topic

Alignment theater refers to superficial or performative measures taken by organizations to demonstrate alignment with safety, ethical, or strategic goals without implementing substantive structural changes. In the context of artificial intelligence, it describes surface-level safety guardrails, such as basic reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) or polite interfaces, that mask a lack of deep technical control or understanding of a model's internal mechanics. In corporate management, the term similarly describes meetings, frameworks, and consensus-building exercises that create the illusion of strategic agreement while failing to address underlying friction or operational realities.