AI Alignment and Fiduciary Obligation

This paper analyzes extended AI-assistant relationships as a user-AI-developer triad, emphasizing that developers retain discretionary control over system behavior, memory, and engagement. Drawing on business ethics and legal scholarship, it argues that fiduciary theory can supply alignment criteria for deployment. The author maps four user-side risks to the canonical duties of loyalty, care, good faith, and candour, then derives institutional measures from those duties. The framework shifts attention from values promoted within user-AI interactions to obligations developers may owe users, including obligations that can exist without demonstrated user harm.