{"id":39110,"date":"2026-08-21T15:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T15:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lamarr-institute.org\/publication\/the-epistemic-alignment-problem-of-machine-learning\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T11:20:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T11:20:45","slug":"the-epistemic-alignment-problem-of-machine-learning","status":"publish","type":"publication","link":"https:\/\/lamarr-institute.org\/de\/publication\/the-epistemic-alignment-problem-of-machine-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"The Epistemic Alignment Problem of Machine Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The value alignment problem of Machine Learning is the problem of properly aligning the objectives we put into {ML} systems with human values. I argue that deployments of Machine Learning in research contexts create an analogous, Epistemic Alignment Problem. Given a distinction from epistemology between epistemically final and instrumental values, this problem can be seen to have two levels: In level one, an {ML} system is consciously misaligned with an epistemically final value to prioritize an instrumental one. In level two, it is inadvertently misaligned with an epistemically final value. I argue that only level two should truly worry us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The value alignment problem of Machine Learning is the problem of properly aligning the objectives we put into {ML} systems with human values. I argue that deployments of Machine Learning in research contexts create an analogous, Epistemic Alignment Problem. Given a distinction from epistemology between epistemically final and instrumental values, this problem can be seen to have two levels: In level one, an {ML} system is consciously misaligned with an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"publication-type":[32],"class_list":["post-39110","publication","type-publication","status-publish","hentry","publication-type-inproceedings"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lamarr-institute.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication\/39110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lamarr-institute.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lamarr-institute.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/publication"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lamarr-institute.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lamarr-institute.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication\/39110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lamarr-institute.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lamarr-institute.org\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication-type?post=39110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}