AI alignment research is the scientific study of ensuring AI systems remain beneficial and under human control, especially as they become more capable. Key research areas: interpretability (understanding model internals), robustness (resisting adversarial attacks), value learning (learning human preferences accurately), and scalable oversight (humans auditing AI at scale). Research is theoretical (proving safety properties) and empirical (testing techniques on real models). It sits at the intersection of machine learning, game theory, philosophy, and robotics. Top researchers at Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, DeepMind, and academia push on unsolved problems daily.