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.