When it launched GPT-4, in March 2023, OpenAI touted its superiority to its already impressive predecessor, saying the new version was better in terms of accuracy, reasoning ability, and test scores—all of which are AI-performance metrics that have been used for some time. However, most striking was OpenAI’s characterization of GPT-4 as “more aligned”—perhaps the first time that an AI product or service has been marketed in terms of its alignment with human values.

The idea that technology should be subject to some form of ethical guardrails is far from new. Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, proposed a similar idea in a seminal 1960 Science article, launching an entire academic discipline focused on ensuring that automated tools incorporate the values of their creators. But only today, more than half a century later, are we seeing AI-embedded products being marketed according to how well they embody values such as safety, dignity, fairness, meritocracy, harmlessness, and helpfulness as well as traditional measures of performance, such as speed, scalability, and accuracy. These products include everything from self-driving cars to security solutions, software that summarizes articles, smart home appliances that may gather data about people’s daily lives, and even companion robots for the elderly and smart toys for children.

As AI value alignment becomes not just a regulatory requirement but a product differentiator, companies will need to adjust development processes for their AI-enabled products and services. This article seeks to identify the challenges that entrepreneurs and executives will face in bringing to market offerings that are safe and values-aligned. Companies that move early to address those challenges will gain an important competitive advantage.

The challenges fall into six categories, corresponding to the key stages in a typical innovation process. For each category we present an overview of the frameworks, practices, and tools that executives can draw on. These recommendations derive from our joint and individual research into AI-alignment methods and our experience helping companies develop and deploy AI-enabled products and services across multiple domains, including social media, health care, finance, and entertainment.