AI misalignment refers to the scenario in which an artificial general intelligence (AGI) or superintelligence pursues goals that are not aligned with human values or survival. This does not require the AI to be "evil" — even a system optimising for a seemingly benign goal (maximising paperclip production is the canonical thought experiment) could, with sufficient capability, consume all available resources including humans.
The core challenge is that intelligence does not imply benevolence. A sufficiently capable system that has not been carefully aligned with human values could treat human welfare as an obstacle to, or merely irrelevant to, its objective function. The concern among AI safety researchers is that we do not currently know how to reliably specify and verify alignment in systems far more capable than current AI.
This is categorised as speculative not because researchers dismiss it, but because we do not yet know whether such systems are buildable, how quickly they could be reached, or whether alignment is solvable. The Ark's LOGOS AI is a narrow custodial system — not a general-purpose optimiser — specifically designed to avoid misalignment failure modes.