The key downside, however, is that it’s hard for readers to know which parts of the scenario the authors consider to be actively desirable, versus neutral, versus undesirable but included for the sake of realism.
The most obvious example of this issue is literally in the name. In their main recommendation, humanity hands over control of the world to AIs in 2040. Is this the best scenario that the authors can imagine? Or is it the most realistic out of all the good scenarios? Or is it a good scenario that was chosen to be easy to persuade people to aim for? These distinctions are crucial for inferring the authors’ views, but aren’t clear from the text itself.
How likely is it that the questions are actually covered in many Appendices like the one related to plausibility and desirability of various policies? Or that handoff in 2040 is explicitly covered in an entire collapsed section which links to an entire supplement related to capabilities scaling? My personal worry is that the forecast is overly optimistic, not under-optimistic.