I am right now in the process of applying for graduate degrees at some US unis e.g. at Stanford. The major motivation to do this is to set up for technical alignment work and have closer access to the EA bay area community (than I'd have here in Europe). Especially in the light of EA quite rapidly expanding in many countries this year this seems however like a pretty basic motivation: After extensive outreach of EA in general/alignment in particular it seems like a reasonable lower bound that there are at least dozens if not potentially hundreds of students applying with precisely this motivation to stanford grad programmes. Obviously I am writing this in a more refined, specific way but ultimately its not like I'd have an extensive track record in breakthroughs of technical alignment research yet.
Now I'm wondering is interest in alignment/from an EA angle something even worth mentioning in the motivation letter, or is it to be expected that it has become such a basic thing, that it is just useless (or even negatively) impacting my application?
Agreed. I'm sure many people on this Forum will be a better fit to answer this question than myself, but in general, your best bet is probably to figure out whether the program(s) and advisor(s) you're applying to work with do work in technical alignment. And mention your interests in alignment if they do, and don't if they don't.
For example, at Berkeley, CHAI and Jacob Steinhardt's group do work in technical alignment. At Cambridge, David Krueger's lab. I believe there's a handful of others.
(Low confidence) I would not guess "basic" would be the main issue with mentioning alignment. Bigger problems may include: