What does corrigibility mean?
Corrigibility is the quality of being capable of correction or improvement. Applied to people, it describes a readiness to be taught, disciplined, or morally reformed — the assumption underlying rehabilitation, education, and lenient judgment. The judge who shows mercy, or the teacher who persists with a struggling pupil, acts on a belief in that person's corrigibility. The word also extends beyond human character: errors in a manuscript have corrigibility when they can be amended, and in contemporary debates about artificial intelligence, corrigibility names a crucial design goal — building systems that willingly accept human oversight, modification, or shutdown. Derived from the Latin corrigere, meaning 'to make right' or 'to correct,' the term entered English alongside its adjective corrigible and stands in direct opposition to incorrigibility, the state of being beyond remedy. Formal and slightly bookish in register, it lends precision wherever the possibility of improvement is at stake.
The quality of being corrigible; susceptibility to correction, reform, or improvement, whether of character, conduct, or some other defect.
"The probation officer's report emphasized the teenager's evident corrigibility."
Frequently used with reference to offenders, children, or students whose faults are considered remediable.
In artificial intelligence safety, the property of a system by which it accepts and does not resist correction, modification, or deactivation by human operators.
"A corrigible agent permits its designers to adjust its goals without attempting to prevent them."
A modern coinage within AI alignment research; largely confined to technical literature.
Before 'incorrigible' became an affectionate tease for a hopeless scamp, its root — corrigere — was all about straightening things out: literally making something right again.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of corrigibility
Corrigibility derives from the Latin verb corrigere, formed from com- ('together, thoroughly') plus regere ('to rule, guide, make straight'), giving the sense 'to set right.' It entered English via Medieval Latin corrigibilitas and the English adjective corrigible, which was borrowed from Old French in the late medieval period; the abstract noun followed in later centuries. It shares this root with correction, rectify (via regere), and regime.
Related word forms
How corrigibility is actually used
A formal, somewhat literary word, most at home in academic, legal, philosophical, and educational writing. It carries a hopeful connotation — it presupposes that faults can be remedied. In recent years it has gained a specialized technical sense in discussions of artificial intelligence safety, where it denotes a system's willingness to be modified or shut down by its operators.
Easily confused with corrigibility
Incorrigibility is the opposite of corrigibility — an incorrigible person cannot be corrected or reformed.