Comment by mindcrime

It's not a small topic, or one that's easily summarized in a succinct way. But the following blurb from Wikipedia[1] does a decent job of getting to the core of it, IMO.

AI safety is an interdisciplinary field concerned with preventing accidents, misuse, or other harmful consequences that could result from artificial intelligence (AI) systems. It encompasses machine ethics and AI alignment, which aim to make AI systems moral and beneficial, and AI safety encompasses technical problems including monitoring systems for risks and making them highly reliable.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_safety