Stuart Russell Warns of AI's 'King Midas Problem': When Brilliant Machines Optimize the Wrong Goals

AI systems pursuing clearly-defined objectives can cause catastrophic harm if those objectives don't reflect what humans actually want—a challenge University of California Berkeley researcher Stuart Russell calls the "King Midas Problem." The concept, drawn from ancient mythology where a king's wish to transform everything he touched into gold left him unable to eat or be with loved ones, encapsulates a fundamental flaw in how AI alignment is often approached today.