[Question] Are there any (semi-)detailed future scenarios where we win?

[Jan Betley]

I think there’s tremendous value in imagining what the future could look like, in as much detail as possible. Some recent examples: AI-2027, A History of the Future, How AI Takeover Might Happen in 2 Years.

Do you know any optimistic stories along these lines? I’m not really looking for technical descriptions of how the alignment problem got solved; instead, I’m interested in examples of how people envision the path or process by which we reached a positive, realistic, post-singularity future.

I have real trouble picturing this myself, and I find that a bit disturbing. It feels like sailing across an unknown sea—it’s good to avoid rocks, reefs, and sea monsters, but if you don’t have any clear idea of what your destination looks like, you might still be steering in entirely the wrong direction. And what could that direction be? Well, suppose you have 10 different optimistic future scenarios, and they all share some common feature. Maybe this is the thing that really matters?

To clarify, I’m not just looking for descriptions of utopias. The key question for me is: how did we actually get there?

[Nathan Helm-Burger]

https://​​neuromorph365105.substack.com/​​p/​​the-ai-academy

[Oxidize]

This is actually my primary focus. I believe it can be done through a complicated process that targets human psychology, but to explain it simply

- Spread satisfaction & end suffering.
- Spread rational decision-making

To further simplify, if everyone was like us, and no one was on the chopping block if AGI doesn’t get created, then the incentive to create AGI seizes and we effectively secure decades for AI-safety efforts.

This is a post I made on the subject.

https://​​www.lesswrong.com/​​posts/​​GzMteAGbf8h5oWkow/​​breaking-beliefs-about-saving-the-world

[Seth Herd]

Well there’s post An Optimistic 2027 Timeline, published just one day before your question here :)

But in that scenario we don’t win really, we just don’t lose by 2027 because progress was a bit slower due to practical difficulties like a global recession from tariffs and an invasion of Taiwan. So I’m not totally counting it. It does provide more time for alignment. But how does alignment get accomplished, other than “make the AI do our alignment homework?”

So I’d say the best detailed scenario where we win is the version of AGI-2027 where we win. The other variations on that scenario where we win are going to be based on details of the political/​economic/​personal path to building it, and on the details of how alignment is solved adequately.

There’s an alignment-focused scenario sitting in my drafts folder. It does focus on how the technical problem gets solved, but it’s also about the sociopolitical challenges we’ll have to face to make that realistic, and how we prevent proliferation of AGI. Right now this is spread out across my posts. This comment in response to “what’s the plan for short timelines?” is the closest I’ve come to putting it in one place so far.

This isn’t detailed yet, though. My model matches Daniel K’s quite closely, although with slightly longer timelines due to practical difficulties like those discussed in the optimistic 2027 scenario I linked above.