Incomplete Contracting and AI Alignment
  We suggest that the analysis of incomplete contracting developed by law and
economics researchers can provide a useful framework for understanding the AI
alignment problem and help to generate a systematic approach to finding
solutions. We first provide an overview of the incomplete contracting
literature and explore parallels between this work and the problem of AI
alignment. As we emphasize, misalignment between principal and agent is a core
focus of economic analysis. We highlight some technical results from the
economics literature on incomplete contracts that may provide insights for AI
alignment researchers. Our core contribution, however, is to bring to bear an
insight that economists have been urged to absorb from legal scholars and other
behavioral scientists: the fact that human contracting is supported by
substantial amounts of external structure, such as generally available
institutions (culture, law) that can supply implied terms to fill the gaps in
incomplete contracts. We propose a research agenda for AI alignment work that
focuses on the problem of how to build AI that can replicate the human
cognitive processes that connect individual incomplete contracts with this
supporting external structure.
