Could AI alignment be a “major evolutionary transition” problem?

One idea I've been exploring: evolutionary biology has a framework for how independent entities become parts of a higher-level system—cells becoming organisms, individuals becoming eusocial colonies, etc.

A recurring challenge is that the interests of the lower-level components don't automatically align with the interests of the new whole. Cancer is an extreme example: a cell can become very successful at optimizing its own replication while harming the organism it depends on.

It makes me wonder whether there's a useful analogy to AI alignment.

As AI systems become more capable and interconnected, perhaps the problem isn't only “How do we align each AI agent?” but also:

“How do we ensure increasingly capable subsystems remain compatible with the larger systems they become part of?”

That could apply at several levels:

AI agent → organization → society → civilization

And it seems relevant to multi-agent systems, AI organizations, collective intelligence, and AI governance.

I'm curious whether people have seen this framing developed elsewhere, particularly in AI safety or evolutionary-transition research.