Alignment Tax
The reduction in model performance or capabilities that may result from implementing safety measures, alignment techniques or responsible AI constraints.
In plain language
The trade-off between making AI safe and making it powerful. Adding safety features sometimes makes the AI slightly less capable or flexible; that's the cost you pay for safety.
Why this matters
Understanding the alignment tax helps governance and technical teams make deliberate trade-offs between capability and safety. Your governance framework should explicitly address how these trade-offs are evaluated, who has authority to approve them and what the thresholds are for acceptable performance reduction.
Relevance
StrategyCapability-versus-safety trade-offs are strategic decisions that should be made explicitly with input from both technical teams and business stakeholders, not left to default choices.
Related terms
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