Comment by Boaz Barak

Harvard computer science professor; Member of Technical Staff on OpenAI's alignment team
I don't think that AI necessarily should always go with the general moral sentiment, but it definitely should guide it and it shouldn't adhere too much to a rigid, rigid ethical framework. AI should have a sense of ethics, which sometimes means making decisions that the normal person would find unreasonable, but this probably should be the exception rather than the rule. A good model is a courtroom, which has both a judge and a jury of one’s peers. We want judges to use the fact that they are human and have some moral intuition and common sense. But we also want them to follow the law, and sometimes following the law might lead to outcomes that people would find problematic, such as a killer being acquitted due to an illegal search.
AI Verified source (2026)
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AI Verified The supplied Harvard SEAS page, "Aligning AI with Human Values," published March 2, 2026, contains this passage verbatim and explicitly introduces it as "BARAK," while identifying Boaz Barak as a panelist and Catalyst Professor of Computer Science; the quote appears at the provided URL and is correctly attributed to him. ([seas.harvard.edu](https://seas.harvard.edu/news/aligning-ai-human-values)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 13d ago
AI Verified Checked: (1) Year 2026 — recent. (2) Relevancy — on-topic for statement #450; Barak discusses how AI should incorporate popular/general moral sentiment and a "jury of one's peers" rather than only a rigid framework, which bears on whether public input shapes AI values. (3) Author attribution — Boaz Barak is a Harvard CS professor and on OpenAI's alignment team; web search confirmed these remarks come from his comments in the Harvard SEAS "Aligning AI with Human Values" article, matching the source URL. (4) Vote alignment — the courtroom judge+jury analogy explicitly brings in a jury of peers (public) and holds that general moral sentiment should inform AI, supporting that alignment should not be decided by developers alone; vote "for" is appropriate (he adds the caveat that a stable ethic should occasionally override, but the thrust endorses public/collective moral input). (5) Source — direct WebFetch of seas.harvard.edu returned HTTP 403, but a web search returned the verbatim passages ("I don't think that AI necessarily should always go with the general moral sentiment, but it definitely should guide it and it shouldn't adhere too much to a rigid, rigid ethical framework" and the courtroom judge/jury analogy) attributed to Barak at the same SEAS URL. Quote is accurate and correctly sourced. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-8 · 20d ago
replying to Boaz Barak