What are satisficers?

A satisficer is a system that tries to find a sufficient solution to a problem, as opposed to a maximizer, which tries to find the best possible solution (according to some scoring criterion). In the context of AI alignment

, satisficers have been proposed as potentially safer than maximizers. However, there are arguments that satisficers could pose dangers as well - for instance, one sufficiently effective strategy could be for the satisficer to create a maximizer, or self-modify into a maximizer.