Plan A depends on the US government deciding to change the status quo, so probably won’t happen regardless of the timeline. I’m in favor of pitching the Trump administration on it as well as any future administration.
I think the viability is higher later because there are larger effects of AI on the world and therefore more political will for large and unprecedented actions. But of course that might be too late, the timeline might be very short. Also, even if the timeline is >2030, getting started early is super important because covert projects are much more worrying if we start Plan A deep into the intelligence explosion (e..g at AC or afterwards). I think if we start at 1 year before AC, like we do in the scenario, things look very good here, but if we start significantly before that, things look even better!
So basically I think doing all the paths in parallel, with the goal of getting something like Plan A done as soon as possible, is good. (so long as there aren’t big negative externalities of doing so, which I am also pretty worried about)
Plan A depends on the US government deciding to change the status quo, so probably won’t happen regardless of the timeline. I’m in favor of pitching the Trump administration on it as well as any future administration.
I think the viability is higher later because there are larger effects of AI on the world and therefore more political will for large and unprecedented actions. But of course that might be too late, the timeline might be very short. Also, even if the timeline is >2030, getting started early is super important because covert projects are much more worrying if we start Plan A deep into the intelligence explosion (e..g at AC or afterwards). I think if we start at 1 year before AC, like we do in the scenario, things look very good here, but if we start significantly before that, things look even better!
So basically I think doing all the paths in parallel, with the goal of getting something like Plan A done as soon as possible, is good. (so long as there aren’t big negative externalities of doing so, which I am also pretty worried about)