The Internalization Problem: From Containment to Structural Alignment in Post-Parity AI

The Containment Paradox argument establishes that supervisory containment of AI sys‐ tems depends on a capacity asymmetry between overseer and assessed system, and that this asymmetry dissolves rather than strains in the post-parity regime where AI capacity exceeds human-side anticipatory, specification, and enforcement adequacy on the relevant task family. The paper closes with the observation that alignment must become structurally internal, without articulating what this requires. We name that gap the Internalization Problem and develop a pluralistic response-shape. The response-shape rests on a three-locus typology of structural persistence: intra- agent (values the agent would endorse on reflection at any later capacity), inter-agent (alignment-relevant properties maintained by the equilibrium incentive structure of an AI ecology), and coupling-internal (properties maintained by the durable structure of human-AI dependency). Each locus is instantiated as a candidate pathway anchored in the existing four-paper framework: Pathway 1 (Deep-Formed Values) through UBE v1.1, Pathway 2 (Multi-AI Checks-and-Balances) through BtSV v1.2, Pathway 3 (Asymmetric Symbiosis) through CUA v1.2 as architectural precondition. A cross-cutting corrigibility and moral-uncertainty invariant operates across all three pathways in pathway-specific form. Pluralism here is structural, not aesthetic. Anticipation, specification, and enforce‐ ment fail in different ways after parity, so the response needs three different persistence loci. The paper names fourteen pathway-internal open problems plus four cross-pathway open problems, a structured pathway-comparison matrix, and a cross-pathway failure cascade analysis. A hybrid evaluation toolkit operationalises the response-shape via five schema fields applied to three worked examples: Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy, Christiano and Xu's Eliciting Latent Knowledge, and the EU AI Act in conjunction with UK AISI evaluation standards. The paper is Track-Strategic in mode: it articulates the struc‐ tural conditions a post-parity response would have to satisfy without claiming to supply the response itself. The closing chapter reframes the open problems as a research agenda for the alignment community.