Principles Do Not Apply Themselves: A Hermeneutic Perspective on AI Alignment

arXiv:2604.10673v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI alignment is often framed as the task of ensuring that an AI system follows a set of stated principles or human preferences, but general principles rarely determine their own application in concrete cases. When principles conflict, when they are too broad to settle a situation, or when the relevant facts are unclear, an additional act of judgment is required. This paper analyzes that step through the lens of hermeneutics and argues that alignmen