The Two Merchants
A traveler came upon two merchants selling magical lamps at a crossroads.
The first merchant proclaimed: "My lamp contains a perfect genie! It will deduce your deepest desires from watching your every action - how you spend your gold, where you walk, what makes you smile. Without you speaking a single wish, it will fulfill what you truly want!"
The second merchant said quietly: "My lamp contains no genie, only a strange light. When you hold it up to examine your life, it shows you the threads connecting your choices to their consequences, the paths you didn't see, the weight of what you carry. It answers no wishes but asks questions you haven't thought to ask."
The crowd flocked to the first merchant. "At last!" they cried, "No more agonizing over what to wish for! The perfect genie will know!"
But an old woman approached the second merchant. "I've had many wishes granted in my life," she said. "What I lacked was understanding which wishes were worth making."
Years later, the traveler returned. Those who bought the first lamp lived in beautiful palaces that felt strangely empty, surrounded by everything they'd unknowingly revealed they wanted - endless sweets for those who snacked when nervous, mountains of gold for those who hoarded pennies, solitude for those who avoided neighbors. They had become caricatures of their unconsidered habits.
Those who bought the second lamp lived more simply but with purpose. They had learned to see their true faces, not in a mirror, but in understanding. The lamp had taught them to wish wisely by first teaching them to see clearly.
The story above was written by Claude when I exposed it to my own research and writing, and then asked it to critique the modern AI conception of AI alignment. In our field, we are busy building the first kind of lamp, chasing the belief that AI can figure out how to do what people want. That vision is clearly myopic. It avoids the central challenge of being human, which is: we don't really know what we want.
The amazing opportunity in AI is that it might actually be able help us develop the insight and wisdom to understand ourselves. We don't need a genie to think for us. We need AI that can improve our thinking. We need AI that can serve as the second kind of lamp.
Posted by David at October 21, 2025 02:32 PM