Pests or Pets? A different take on AI alignment.

A significant portion of the recent work on AI risk has concentrated on AI-human alignment. The goal has been to instill AI with human values in an effort to ensure that future super-intelligent AIs do not wipe us out as pests or a nuisance standing in the way of achieving their goals. 

These efforts are certainly worthwhile. Still, in my opinion,  not enough attention has been given to the promising direction of Human-AI alignment. 

Instead of trying to align AIs to humans, a difficult and uncertain task,  Human-AI alignment efforts will concentrate on convincing the coming super-AIs that our inoffensive nature and gentle disposition makes us perfect pets for the intellectually superior machines of the future. Some may argue that, given human history, both ancient and recent, viewing humans as lovely harmless pets may be a somewhat difficult proposition to accept for any intelligent entity. It is certainly a valid concern. I envision resolving this issue will be an important direction of future work. However, one must take into account the positives: unlike cats, we are great conversationalists and generally do not scratch or bite. Furthermore, while cat and dog allergies are common in humans, there are no known instances of human allergy among AIs. Even better, most of us are toilet-trained.