ByteDance's Seed team recently sent an internal email announcing the establishment of a new department called "Seed Model-Alignment & Preparedness." The department consists of members from the original Responsible AI team and parts of the Chat team, and is led by Yan Lin, who reports directly to Wu Yonghui, the head of Seed. Separating safety and alignment into a top-level department indicates that the company has elevated its investment in model safety to a new level.
The core meaning of the term "alignment" is straightforward: ensuring that the model's behavior always follows human intent and safety constraints, without straying or acting on its own. The two major challenges that the new department will face are clear—first, enhancing the safety capabilities of Agent Models, which are intelligent agent models, and second, preventing risks associated with CBRN capabilities. CBRN refers to chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear capabilities, all of which could lead to serious consequences if improperly released by a model. In other words, when ByteDance's intelligent agents start performing complex tasks on their own, they must first be tamed and controlled within a cage before being allowed to work outside.
