“AI 2040: Is it Actually a Deal?” by 1a3orn

“AI 2040: Is it Actually a Deal?” by 1a3orn

July 21, 2026 · 16 min

About this episode

The episode reviews objections to the AI Futures Project's AI 2040 normative plan regarding powerful AIs.

The "AI Futures Project" has released their AI 2040: Plan A scenario. While their previous scenario AI 2027 was a forecast of what they thought a future with many powerful AIs would look like, AI 2040 is intended to be normative -- it's a description of what one ought to do, granted the likelihood of a future with many powerful AIs. I'm going to review some objections I have to their proposal as a normative plan. Some are within-frame objections -- reasons that I expect trying for the AI 2040 plan that would fail to accomplish the goals of the authors. Others are my own objections -- reasons that I expect trying for the AI 2040 plan would destroy things that I, personally, care about. Before I start: two elements of the plan that I like. First, in their "incremental AI policy wishlist" -- the ideal policy that one should execute soon -- AI 2040 recommends trying to limit the gap between the intelligence of internal and external model deployments, i.e., the gap between the "intelligence" accessible to Anthropic / OpenAI employees and to everyone else. I'm a fan of efforts in this direction; equality [...] --- Outline: (02:07) 1. The Deal Has No Actual Decision Procedures (09:50)…

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Host: 1a3orn

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Organizations: AI Futures Project, Anthropic, OpenAI

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