LLM Alignment should go beyond Harmlessness–Helpfulness and incorporate Human Agency
Large Language Models are transforming communication, research, and decision-making, but misalignment – when models diverge from human values, safety requirements, or user intent – poses serious risks. In this position paper, we argue that many alignment failures stem from operational choices in training and deployment. We posit that alignment should shift from static, post-training constraints toward dynamic, participatory approaches that safeguard pluralism, autonomy, and human flourishing. We outline forward-looking directions, including pluralistic evaluation, transparency, and the Flourishing–Justice–Autonomy (FJA) framework, and present a roadmap for advancing alignment research and practice.
Authors
- Preslav Nakov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3600-1510)
- Mark Dras (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9908-7182)
- Soujanya Poria (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6924-7931)
- Tanmoy Chakraborty (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0210-0369)
- Usman Naseem (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0191-7171)
- Kai-Wei Chang
- Nanyun Peng
Institutions
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- Nanyang Technological University (SG)
- Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (AE)
- Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IN)
- Macquarie University (AU)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Cognitive Computation
- Published
- 2026-03-13
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s12559-026-10568-9
- Primary Topic
- Business Law and Ethics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- DeepMind
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München