Spec & Technical: Phase 55.2 ValueAligner — Constitutional AI & Alignment Verification

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Technical Specification: ValueAligner

Architecture Overview

The ValueAligner encodes human values as explicit constitutional principles and verifies system outputs against them, following the Constitutional AI paradigm from Bai et al. (2022).

Core Architecture

ValueSpec → ConstitutionEngine → PrincipleEnforcer → AlignmentVerifier
               ↓                       ↓                    ↓
       PrincipleHierarchy       OutputFilter          FormalVerifier
               ↓                       ↓                    ↓
       ConflictResolver         RejectSampler         SelfCritiquePipeline

Key Design Decisions

1. Declarative Principles: YAML-based constitution with logical operators for composable constraints
2. Layered Enforcement: Soft guidance (reward shaping) + hard constraints (rejection sampling)
3. Self-Critique Loop: Model generates, critiques against principles, revises — iterative refinement
4. Formal Verification: SMT-solver integration for mathematically provable constraint satisfaction

Interface Contracts

interface ValueAligner {
  loadConstitution(principles: Principle[]): Promise<Constitution>;
  checkAlignment(output: string, context: Context): Promise<AlignmentResult>;
  selfCritique(response: string, principles: Principle[]): Promise<RevisedResponse>;
  verifyConstraints(output: string, constraints: FormalConstraint[]): Promise<VerificationResult>;
  resolveConflict(conflicting: Principle[]): Promise<Resolution>;
}

Open Technical Questions

• How to formally specify "helpfulness" as a verifiable constraint?
• Optimal number of self-critique iterations before diminishing returns?
• How to handle emergent behaviors not covered by existing principles?

Related issue: #1051