RSS

AI Risk Con­crete Stories

TagLast edit: 30 Dec 2024 10:11 UTC by Dakara

AI Risk Concrete Stories are narratives that illustrate potential catastrophic scenarios involving advanced AI systems, often used to make abstract risks more tangible and relatable. These stories typically describe specific ways AI systems might cause harm to humanity.

See also Threat Models

How AI Takeover Might Hap­pen in 2 Years

joshc7 Feb 2025 17:10 UTC
432 points
141 comments29 min readLW link
(x.com)

Will GPT-5 be able to self-im­prove?

Nathan Helm-Burger29 Apr 2023 17:34 UTC
18 points
22 comments3 min readLW link

“If we go ex­tinct due to mis­al­igned AI, at least na­ture will con­tinue, right? … right?”

plex18 May 2024 14:09 UTC
54 points
23 comments2 min readLW link
(aisafety.info)

Another plau­si­ble sce­nario of AI risk: AI builds mil­i­tary in­fras­truc­ture while col­lab­o­rat­ing with hu­mans, defects later.

avturchin10 Jun 2022 17:24 UTC
10 points
2 comments1 min readLW link

The Pando Prob­lem: Re­think­ing AI Individuality

Jan_Kulveit28 Mar 2025 21:03 UTC
133 points
14 comments13 min readLW link

What Mul­tipo­lar Failure Looks Like, and Ro­bust Agent-Ag­nos­tic Pro­cesses (RAAPs)

Andrew_Critch31 Mar 2021 23:50 UTC
285 points
65 comments22 min readLW link1 review

Catas­trophic Risks from AI #6: Dis­cus­sion and FAQ

27 Jun 2023 23:23 UTC
24 points
1 comment13 min readLW link
(arxiv.org)

Rishi to out­line his vi­sion for Bri­tain to take the world lead in polic­ing AI threats when he meets Joe Biden

Mati_Roy6 Jun 2023 4:47 UTC
25 points
1 comment1 min readLW link
(www.dailymail.co.uk)

The next decades might be wild

Marius Hobbhahn15 Dec 2022 16:10 UTC
175 points
42 comments41 min readLW link1 review

A plau­si­ble story about AI risk.

DeLesley Hutchins10 Jun 2022 2:08 UTC
16 points
2 comments4 min readLW link

Catas­trophic Risks from AI #1: Introduction

22 Jun 2023 17:09 UTC
40 points
1 comment5 min readLW link
(arxiv.org)

Catas­trophic Risks from AI #4: Or­ga­ni­za­tional Risks

26 Jun 2023 19:36 UTC
23 points
0 comments21 min readLW link
(arxiv.org)

Catas­trophic Risks from AI #5: Rogue AIs

27 Jun 2023 22:06 UTC
15 points
0 comments22 min readLW link
(arxiv.org)

Catas­trophic Risks from AI #2: Mal­i­cious Use

22 Jun 2023 17:10 UTC
38 points
1 comment17 min readLW link
(arxiv.org)

It Looks Like You’re Try­ing To Take Over The World

gwern9 Mar 2022 16:35 UTC
410 points
120 comments1 min readLW link1 review
(www.gwern.net)

Catas­trophic Risks from AI #3: AI Race

23 Jun 2023 19:21 UTC
18 points
9 comments29 min readLW link
(arxiv.org)

LifeKeeper Diaries: Ex­plor­ing Misal­igned AI Through In­ter­ac­tive Fiction

9 Nov 2024 20:58 UTC
15 points
5 comments2 min readLW link

Clar­ify­ing “What failure looks like”

Sam Clarke20 Sep 2020 20:40 UTC
97 points
14 comments17 min readLW link

The Sim­plest Good

Jesse Hoogland2 Feb 2025 19:51 UTC
76 points
6 comments5 min readLW link

“Hu­man­ity vs. AGI” Will Never Look Like “Hu­man­ity vs. AGI” to Humanity

Thane Ruthenis16 Dec 2023 20:08 UTC
192 points
34 comments5 min readLW link

Slow mo­tion videos as AI risk in­tu­ition pumps

Andrew_Critch14 Jun 2022 19:31 UTC
242 points
41 comments2 min readLW link1 review

A god in a box

predict-woo29 Jan 2025 0:55 UTC
1 point
0 comments7 min readLW link

Are we the Wolves now? Hu­man Eu­gen­ics un­der AI Control

Brit30 Jan 2025 8:31 UTC
−1 points
2 comments2 min readLW link

Most Ques­tion­able De­tails in ‘AI 2027’

Commander Zander5 Apr 2025 0:32 UTC
34 points
12 comments6 min readLW link

Scale Was All We Needed, At First

Gabe M14 Feb 2024 1:49 UTC
296 points
35 comments8 min readLW link
(aiacumen.substack.com)

AI x-risk, ap­prox­i­mately or­dered by embarrassment

Alex Lawsen 12 Apr 2023 23:01 UTC
151 points
7 comments19 min readLW link

Green goo is plausible

anithite18 Apr 2023 0:04 UTC
67 points
31 comments4 min readLW link1 review

It Is Un­ten­able That Near-Fu­ture AI Sce­nario Models Like “AI 2027” Don’t In­clude Open Source AI

Andrew Dickson16 May 2025 2:20 UTC
37 points
17 comments5 min readLW link

Brain­storm­ing: Slow Takeoff

David Piepgrass23 Jan 2024 6:58 UTC
3 points
0 comments51 min readLW link

Challenge pro­posal: small­est pos­si­ble self-hard­en­ing back­door for RLHF

Christopher King29 Jun 2023 16:56 UTC
7 points
0 comments2 min readLW link

A bet­ter anal­ogy and ex­am­ple for teach­ing AI takeover: the ML Inferno

Christopher King14 Mar 2023 19:14 UTC
18 points
0 comments5 min readLW link

Hu­man level AI can plau­si­bly take over the world

anithite1 Mar 2023 23:27 UTC
27 points
12 comments2 min readLW link

The way AGI wins could look very stupid

Christopher King12 May 2023 16:34 UTC
56 points
22 comments1 min readLW link

What suc­cess looks like

28 Jun 2022 14:38 UTC
19 points
4 comments1 min readLW link
(forum.effectivealtruism.org)

AI Safety Endgame Stories

Ivan Vendrov28 Sep 2022 16:58 UTC
31 points
11 comments11 min readLW link

Mus­ings on Sce­nario Fore­cast­ing and AI

Alvin Ånestrand6 Mar 2025 12:28 UTC
10 points
0 comments11 min readLW link
(forecastingaifutures.substack.com)

Grad­ual take­off, fast failure

Max H16 Mar 2023 22:02 UTC
15 points
4 comments5 min readLW link

A Story of AI Risk: In­struc­tGPT-N

peterbarnett26 May 2022 23:22 UTC
24 points
0 comments8 min readLW link

TBC Epi­sode with Max Harms—Red Heart and If Any­one Builds It, Every­one Dies

Steven K Zuber29 Oct 2025 15:49 UTC
12 points
0 comments1 min readLW link
(www.thebayesianconspiracy.com)

Re­spond­ing to ‘Beyond Hyper­an­thro­po­mor­phism’

ukc1001414 Sep 2022 20:37 UTC
9 points
0 comments16 min readLW link

How an AI com­pany CEO could quietly take over the world

Alex Kastner23 Oct 2025 23:33 UTC
52 points
13 comments11 min readLW link

Out­law Code

Commander Zander30 Jan 2025 23:41 UTC
10 points
1 comment2 min readLW link

wait­in­gai : When a Pro­gram Learns to Want to Live!!!

盛mm13 Oct 2025 12:36 UTC
1 point
0 comments2 min readLW link

A bridge to Dath Ilan? Im­proved gov­er­nance on the crit­i­cal path to AI al­ign­ment.

Jackson Wagner18 May 2022 15:51 UTC
24 points
0 comments12 min readLW link

Places of Lov­ing Grace [Story]

ank18 Feb 2025 23:49 UTC
−1 points
0 comments4 min readLW link

The Peril of the Great Leaks (writ­ten with ChatGPT)

bvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbvbv31 Mar 2023 18:14 UTC
3 points
1 comment1 min readLW link

A Modest Pivotal Act

anonymousaisafety13 Jun 2022 19:24 UTC
−16 points
1 comment5 min readLW link
No comments.