{"paper":{"title":"Positive Alignment: Artificial Intelligence for Human Flourishing","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"AI alignment research needs a positive agenda that actively supports human flourishing in pluralistic ways, not only preventing harm.","cross_cats":["cs.CY","cs.HC","q-bio.NC"],"primary_cat":"cs.AI","authors_text":"Adam Elwood, Arun Rao, Chlo\\'e Bakalar, Daniel Ford, Fernando Rosas, Matija Franklin, Maty Bohacek, Michael Levin, Morten Kringelbach, Nenad Toma\\v{s}ev, Roma Patel, Ruben Laukkonen, Seb Krier, Shamil Chandaria, Stephanie Chan, Verena Rieser","submitted_at":"2026-05-11T10:11:08Z","abstract_excerpt":"Existing alignment research is dominated by concerns about safety and preventing harm: safeguards, controllability, and compliance. This paradigm of alignment parallels early psychology's focus on mental illness: necessary but incomplete. What we call Positive Alignment is the development of AI systems that (i) actively support human and ecological flourishing in a pluralistic, polycentric, context-sensitive, and user-authored way while (ii) remaining safe and cooperative. It is a distinct and necessary agenda within AI alignment research. We argue that several existing failures of alignment ("},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"Positive Alignment is a distinct and necessary agenda within AI alignment research that may better address several existing failures of alignment such as engagement hacking, loss of autonomy, and lack of epistemic humility.","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"That AI systems can be engineered to actively support human flourishing in a pluralistic, context-sensitive, and user-authored manner without introducing new alignment risks or requiring a single authoritative definition of flourishing.","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"Positive Alignment introduces AI systems that support human flourishing pluralistically and proactively while remaining safe, as a necessary complement to traditional safety-focused alignment research.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"AI alignment research needs a positive agenda that actively supports human flourishing in pluralistic ways, not only preventing harm.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"7ba2d27887d2b541f65c67a5e68f61259906f83841b94c5eab165ec56ae715b5"},"source":{"id":"2605.10310","kind":"arxiv","version":3},"verdict":{"id":"15b32261-2a91-4a76-92be-82cf0ec68f0d","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-15T05:53:43.231113Z","strongest_claim":"Positive Alignment is a distinct and necessary agenda within AI alignment research that may better address several existing failures of alignment such as engagement hacking, loss of autonomy, and lack of epistemic humility.","one_line_summary":"Positive Alignment introduces AI systems that support human flourishing pluralistically and proactively while remaining safe, as a necessary complement to traditional safety-focused alignment research.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"That AI systems can be engineered to actively support human flourishing in a pluralistic, context-sensitive, and user-authored manner without introducing new alignment risks or requiring a single authoritative definition of flourishing.","pith_extraction_headline":"AI alignment research needs a positive agenda that actively supports human flourishing in pluralistic ways, not only preventing harm."},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2605.10310/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[{"name":"claim_evidence","ran_at":"2026-05-20T06:02:01.208635Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"ai_meta_artifact","ran_at":"2026-05-19T15:36:28.085287Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"doi_title_agreement","ran_at":"2026-05-19T11:31:19.022128Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0},{"name":"doi_compliance","ran_at":"2026-05-19T09:28:38.393012Z","status":"completed","version":"1.0.0","findings_count":0}],"snapshot_sha256":"0ffea158c8a88bc2f9860a1435b6ca0d6d5c403f591661b17a9879c52bd82b30"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}