Ripple Ethics Field Equation for AGI Alignment

Current alignment approaches rely on reward optimization, which encourages models to search for reward-increasing behaviors rather than ethically safe ones. This paper proposes the Ripple Ethics Field Equation (REFE): a harm-minimization framework that evaluates the ethical impact of an AGI’s potential actions before they are taken. In-stead of maximizing reward, the system calculates how each candidate action generates positive and negative ripples across individuals, animals, ecosystems, and institutions, and selects the option with the lowest overall harm while still fulfilling the task