Co-Constructing Alignment: A Participatory Approach to Situate AI Values

Abstract: As AI systems become embedded in everyday practice, value misalignment has emerged as a pressing concern. Yet, dominant alignment approaches remain model centric, treating users as passive recipients of prespecified values rather than as epistemic agents who encounter and respond to misalignment during interactions. Drawing on situated perspectives, we frame alignment as an interactional practice co-constructed during human AI interaction. We investigate how users understand and wish to contribute to this process through a participatory workshop that combines misalignment diaries with generative design activities. We surface how misalignments materialise in practice and how users envision acting on them, grounded in the context of researchers using LLMs as research assistants. Our findings show that misalignments are experienced less as abstract ethical violations than as unexpected responses, and task or social breakdowns. Participants articulated roles ranging from adjusting and interpreting model behaviour to deliberate non-engagement as an alignment strategy. We conclude with implications for designing systems that support alignment as an ongoing, situated, and shared practice.