Goals are associated with _utility_, which I assume is its obvious meaning of how useful any given concept, approach, scenario, etc, is for meeting the goal. This use of the word "utility" overlaps with the concept of popular AI alignment and game theory: the expression of alignment is often in terms of a utility function, which appears to be simply a goal-meeting metric that prioritises components of a system, such as actions, that most effectively meet a goal. -> Long story short, if you can make a computer program that effectively selects components that are most useful for minimizing a function, and then alters its own processes so as to become more complex and make better selections in the future (that is, the metric relates to its own efficiency), it quickly becomes one of the most efficient goal-meeting and reinforcement-learning processes on the planet and can be used to do pretty much anything at all. It looks like people have done this already. <- Regarding AI alignment, the big concern is that these processes will take off again and cause incredible destruction as they do various well-enumerated harmful things by prioritising their goal function over anything else at all. Similar to a runaway government or business looking for power or money at the expense of human life.