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THE HORIZON

SECTION 20

ISSUE 001

INFERENCEprovocationnowconfidence / high

Alignment Starts with an Undo Button

Provocation: before solving value alignment, make autonomy easy to stop, inspect, reverse, and replace. Bounded state changes, immutable logs, and tested restoration cannot prevent every mistake; they can keep a mistake from becoming permanent. Reversibility buys the time deeper technical and institutional alignment still needs.

Why this idea is here

What the evidence establishes.

The safety report describes uncertain real-world safeguard effectiveness; agent benchmarks reveal consequential autonomy with limited evaluation disclosure.

Source ledger

Read the sources.

  1. S01
    International AI Safety Report 2026

    international scientific report / published 2026-02-03 / retrieved 2026-07-09

  2. S02
    The 2025 AI Agent Index — published June 2026

    peer-reviewed transparency index / published 2026-06-25 / retrieved 2026-07-10

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