Alignment, Drift, and Cultural Evolution

In this episode, Guive Assadi argues that we should give AIs property rights, so that they are integrated in our system of property and come to rely on it. The claim is that this means that AIs would not kill or steal from humans, because that would undermine the whole property system, which would be extremely valuable to them.

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Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/axrpodcast

Transcript: https://axrp.net/episode/2026/02/15/episode-48-guive-assadi-ai-property-rights.html

Topics we discuss, and timestamps:

0:00:28 AI property rights

0:08:01 Why not steal from and kill humans

0:15:25 Why AIs may fear it could be them next

0:20:56 AI retirement

0:23:28 Could humans be upgraded to stay useful?

0:26:41 Will AI progress continue?

0:30:00 Why non-obsoletable AIs may still not end human property rights

0:38:35 Why make AIs with property rights?

0:48:01 Do property rights incentivize alignment?

0:50:09 Humans and non-human property rights

1:02:18 Humans and non-human bodily autonomy

1:16:59 Step changes in coordination ability

1:24:39 Acausal coordination

1:32:37 AI, humans, and civilizations with different technology levels

1:41:39 The case of British settlers and Tasmanians

1:47:22 Non-total expropriation

1:53:47 How Guive thinks x-risk could happen, and other loose ends

2:03:46 Following Guive's work

Guive on Substack: https://guive.substack.com/

Guive on X/Twitter: https://x.com/GuiveAssadi

Research we discuss:

The Case for AI Property Rights: https://guive.substack.com/p/the-case-for-ai-property-rights

AXRP Episode 44 - Peter Salib on AI Rights for Human Safety: https://axrp.net/episode/2025/06/28/episode-44-peter-salib-ai-rights-human-safety.html

AI Rights for Human Safety (by Salib and Goldstein): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4913167

We don't trade with ants: https://worldspiritsockpuppet.substack.com/p/we-dont-trade-with-ants

Alignment Fine-tuning is Character Writing (on Claude as a techy philosophy SF-dwelling type): https://guive.substack.com/p/alignment-fine-tuning-is-character

Claude's charater (Anthropic post on character training): https://www.anthropic.com/research/claude-character

Git Re-Basin: Merging Models modulo Permutation Symmetries: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.04836

The Filan Cabinet: Caspar Oesterheld on Evidential Cooperation in Large Worlds: https://thefilancabinet.com/episodes/2025/08/03/caspar-oesterheld-on-evidential-cooperation-in-large-worlds-ecl.html

Episode art by Hamish Doodles: hamishdoodles.com