Do we align heavy machinery the way AI is suggested to be aligned (or align pathogens when in a laboratory)? My point is that something more like containment & control (i.e., aligning the possible outcomes) might be more practical than alignment of the thing (already much simpler systems and machinery can exhibit unexpected behavior).
The problem with control is that it will fail at scale. We can't control something that is actually smarter than us, if AI (LLMs or otherwise) get there.
Chimps wouldn't last long trying to contains humans. Maybe for a while they'd keep us scared, but we would come up with ways to escape that the chimp could never have considered.
Likewise humans can control more intelligent humans, for example - not really an issue.
Intelligence isn't some magic to escape physics, for example (or convince every human of anything it wants to).