  The field of AI alignment aims to steer AI systems toward human goals,
preferences, and ethical principles. Its contributions have been instrumental
for improving the output quality, safety, and trustworthiness of today's AI
models. This perspective article draws attention to a fundamental challenge
inherent in all AI alignment endeavors, which we term the "AI alignment
paradox": The better we align AI models with our values, the easier we make it
for adversaries to misalign the models. We illustrate the paradox by sketching
three concrete example incarnations for the case of language models, each
corresponding to a distinct way in which adversaries can exploit the paradox.
With AI's increasing real-world impact, it is imperative that a broad community
of researchers be aware of the AI alignment paradox and work to find ways to
break out of it, in order to ensure the beneficial use of AI for the good of
humanity.
