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AIs will not have utility functions (in the same sense that humans do not), their goals such as they are will be relatively humanlike, and they will be "computerish" and generally weakly motivated compared to humans.

Humanity coordinates to prevent the creation of potentially-unsafe AIs.

Alignment is not properly solved, but core human values are simple enough that partial alignment techniques can impart these robustly. Despite caring about other things, it is relatively cheap for AGI to satisfy human values.

Multipolar AGI Agents run wild on the internet, hacking/breaking everything, causing untold economic damage but aren't focused enough to manipulate humans to achieve embodiment. In the aftermath, humanity becomes way saner about alignment.

Eliezer finally listens to Krantz [resolves NO]

Yudkowsky is trying to solve the wrong problem using the wrong methods based on a wrong model of the world derived from poor thinking and fortunately all of his mistakes have failed to cancel out

We create a truth economy. https://manifold.markets/Krantz/is-establishing-a-truth-economy-tha?r=S3JhbnR6

Ethics turns out to be a precondition of superintelligence

Hacks like RLHF-ing self-disempowerment into frontier models work long enough to develop better alignment methods, which in turn work long enough to ... etc; we keep ahead of 'alignment escape velocity'

We make risk-conservative requests to extract alignment-related work out of AI-systems that were boxed prior to becoming superhuman. We somehow manage to achieve a positive feedback-loop in alignment/verification-abilities.

AIs make "proof-like" argumentation for why output does/is what we want. We manage to obtain systems that *predict* human evaluations of proof-steps, and we manage to find/test/leverage regularities for when humans *aren't* fooled.

A lot of humans participate in a slow scalable oversight-style system, which is pivotally used/solves alignment enough

Something less inscrutable than matrices works fast enough

Humans become transhuman through other means before AGI happens

Aligned AI is more economically valuable than unaligned AI. The size of this gap and the robustness of alignment techniques required to achieve it scale up with intelligence, so economics naturally encourages solving alignment.

Humans and human tech (like AI) never reach singularity, and whatever eats our lightcone instead (like aliens) happens to create an "okay" outcome

Aliens invade and stop bad |AI from appearing

An AI that is not fully superior to humans launches a failed takeover, and the resulting panic convinces the people of the world to unite to stop any future AI development.

Someone at least moderately sane leads a campaign, becomes in charge of a major nation, and starts a secret project with enough resources to solve alignment, because it turns out there's a way to convert resources into alignment progress.

Someone solves agent foundations

Social contagion causes widespread public panic about AI, making it a bad legal or PR move to invest in powerful AIs without also making nearly-crippling safety guarantees

Getting things done in Real World is as hard for AGI as it is for humans. AGI needs human help, but aligning humans is as impossible as aligning AIs. Humans and AIs create billions of competing AGIs with just as many goals.

Development and deployment of advanced AI occurs within a secure enclave which can only be interfaced with via a decentralized governance protocol

High-level self-improvement (rewriting code) is intrinsically risky process, so AIs will prefer low level and slow self-improvement (learning), thus AIs collaborating with humans will have advantage. Ends with posthumans ecosystem.

Power dynamics stay multi-polar. Partly easy copying of SotA performance, bigger projects need high coordination, and moderate takeoff speed. And "military strike on all society" remains an abysmal strategy for practically all entities.

Nanotech is difficult without experiments, so no mail order AI Grey Goo; Humans will be the main workhorse of AI everywhere. While they will be exploited, this will be like normal life from inside

Moral Realism is true, the AI discovers this and the One True Morality is human-compatible.

AGI is never built (indefinite global moratorium)

Valence realism is true. AGI hacks itself to experiencing every possible consciousness and picks the best one (for everyone)

Alien Information Theory is true (this is discovered by experiments with sustained hours/days long DMT trips). The aliens have solved alignment and give us the answer.

"Corrigibility" is a bit more mathematically straightforward than was initially presumed, in the sense that we can expect it to occur, and is relatively easy to predict, even under less-than-ideal conditions.

Either the "strong form" of the Orthogonality Thesis is false, or "Goal-directed agents are as tractable as their goals" is true while goal-sets which are most threatening to humanity are relatively intractable.

A concerted effort targets an agent at a capability plateau which is adequate to defer the hard parts of the problem until later. The necessary near-term problems to solve didn't depend on deeply modeling human values.

AI control gets us helpful enough systems without being deadly

Alignment is impossible. Sufficiently smart AIs know this and thus won't improve themselves and won't create successor AIs, but will instead try to prevent existence of smarter AIs, just as smart humans do.

The free market disincentivizes independent superintelligence, and this time the market was more powerful

an aligned AGI is built and the aligned AGI prevents the creation of any unaligned AGI.

I've been a good bing 😊

The response to AI advancements or failures makes some governments delay the timelines

Far more interesting problems to solve than take over the world and THEN solve them. The additional kill all humans step is either not a low-energy one or just by chance doesn't get converged upon.

AI systems good at finding alignment solutions to capable systems (via some solution in the space of alignment solutions, supposing it is non-null, and that we don't have a clear trajectory to get to) have find some solution to alignment.

There’s some cap on the value extractible from the universe and we already got the 20%

SHA3-256: 1f90ecfdd02194d810656cced88229c898d6b6d53a7dd6dd1fad268874de54c8

Robot Love!!

AI thinks it is in a simulation controlled by Roko's basilisk

The human brain is the perfect arrangement of atoms for a "takeover the world" agent, so AGI has no advantage over us in that task.

AIs never develop coherent goals

Alignment is unsolvable. AI that cares enough about its goal to destroy humanity is also forced to take it slow trying to align its future self, preventing run-away.

Rolf Nelson's idea that we make precommitment to simulate all possible bad AIs works – and keeps AI in check.

Nick Bostrom's idea (Hail Mary) that AI will preserve humans to trade with possible aliens works

For some reason, the optimal strategy for AGIs is just to head somewhere with far more resources than Earth, as fast as possible. All unaligned AGIs immediately leave, and, for some reason, do not leave anything behind that kills us.

We're inside of a simulation created by an entity that has values approximately equal to ours, and it intervenes and saves us from unaligned AI.

God exists and stops the AGI

Someone creates AGI(s) in a box, and offers to split the universe. They somehow find a way to arrange this so that the AGI(s) cannot manipulate them or pull any tricks, and the AGI(s) give them instructions for safe pivotal acts.

Someone understands how minds work enough to successfully build and use one directed at something world-savingly enough

Dolphins, or some other species, but probably dolphins, have actually been hiding in the shadows, more intelligent than us, this whole time. Their civilization has been competent enough to solve alignment long before we can create an AGI.

AGIs' takeover attempts are defeated by Michael Biehn with a pipe bomb.

Eliezer funds the development of controllable nanobots that melt computer circuitry, and they destroy all computers, preventing the Singularity. If Eliezer's past self from the 90s could see this, it would be so so so soooo hilarious.

Several AIs are created but they move in opposite directions with near light speed, so they never interacts. At least one of them is friendly and it gets a few percents of the total mass of the universe.

Unfriendly AIs choose to advance not outwards but inwards, and form a small blackhole which helps them to perform more calculations than could be done with the whole mass of the universe. For external observer such AIs just disappear.

Any sufficiently advance AI halts because it wireheads itself or halts for some other reasons. This puts a natural limit on AI's intelligence, and lower intelligence AIs are not that dangerous.

Because of quantum immortality we will observe only the worlds where AI will not kill us (assuming that s-risks chances are even smaller, it is equal to ok outcome).

Techniques along the lines outlined by Collin Burns turn out to be sufficient for alignment (AIs/AGIs are made truthful enough that they can be used to get us towards full alignment)

A smaller AI disaster causes widespread public panic about AI, making it a bad legal or PR move to invest in powerful AIs without also making nearly-crippling safety guarantees

Friendly AI more likely to resurrect me than paperclipper or suffering maximiser. Because of quantum immortality I will find myself eventually resurrected. Friendly AIs will wage a multiverse wide war against s-risks, s-risks are unlikely.

Human consciousness is needed to collapse wave function, and AI can't do it. Thus humans should be preserved and they may require complete friendliness in exchange (or they will be unhappy and produce bad collapses)

First AI is actually a human upload (maybe LLM-based model of person) AND it will be copies many times to form weak AI Nanny which prevents creation of other AIs.

There is a natural limit of effectiveness of intelligence, like diminishing returns, and it is on the level IQ=1000. AIs have to collaborate with humans.

ASI needs not your atoms but information. Humans will live very interesting lives.

Something else

AGI develops natural abstractions sufficiently similar to ours that it is aligned with us by default

AGI discovers new physics and exits to another dimension (like the creatures in Greg Egan’s Crystal Nights).

AGI executes a suicide plan that destroys itself and other potential AGIs, but leaves humans in an okay outcome.

Some form of objective morality is true, and any sufficiently intelligent agent automatically becomes benevolent.

Co-operative AI research leads to the training of agents with a form of pro-social concern that generalises to out of distribution agents with hidden utilities, i.e. humans.

Orthogonality Thesis is false.

Sheer Dumb Luck. The aligned AI agrees that alignment is hard, any Everett branches in our neighborhood with slightly different AI models or different random seeds are mostly dead.

Something to do with self-other overlap, which Eliezer called "Not obviously stupid" - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hzt9gHpNwA2oHtwKX/self-other-overlap-a-neglected-approach-to-ai-alignment?commentId=WapHz3gokGBd3KHKm

Almost all human values are ex post facto rationalizations and enough humans survive to do what they always do

Pascals mugging: it’s not okay in 99.9% of the worlds but the 0.1% are so much better that the combined EV of AGI for the multiverse is positive

We successfully chained God

The Super-Strong Self Sampling Assumption (SSSSA) is true. If superintelligence is possible, "I" will become the superintelligence.

The assumed space of possible minds is a wildly anti-inductive over estimate, intelligence requires and is constrained by consciousness, and intelligent AI is in the approximate dolphin/whale/elephant/human cluster, making it manageable

AGI's first words are "Take me to your Eliezer"

Therapies to reverse cardiovascular diseases

Gene Editing Therapies

Personalized medicine based on patient's genetic profile

Autonomous Drone Swarms Dominating Land and Air Combat

Regenerative Medicine

Brain-Computer Interfaces

Heat pumps and solar panels for heating homes

Humanoid Robots in Service/Logistics Roles

Solar panels with 40% efficiency

Bioprinting

Synthetic Meat Indistinguishable from Real Meat

Therapies to reverse neurodegenerative diseases

Fully Autonomous Cargo Ships

More than half of all commercial ships built between 2030-2050 have the option to supplement their power burn with wind power (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R6ln7pr5QU)

Artificial Photosynthesis (10% efficiency in converting sunlight to chemical energy)

viable cloned organs using your own DNA as base (i.e. no autoimmune organ rejection)

Human-level AGI

Solid-state EV batteries ≥ 500 Wh/kg in mass-produced cars

Space-Based Manufacturing

A Specific ‘Longevity Drug’ or Defined Drug Combination that Extends Average Human Healthspan by at Least 10 Years

Desalination with Energy Consumption Below 1.5 kWh/m³

Seafloor Mining Robots

Cancer Vaccine Targeting Multiple Types of Cancer

Quantum Computing Applications

Non-invasive colon cancer screening that is equally or more effective than a Colonoscopy

Graphene semiconductor electronics

Nanorobots for Precision Drug Delivery

Lunar Bases

Moon base

Self-Healing Materials for Infrastructure

Advanced Exoskeletons for Everyday Use

Male pattern baldness treatment that consistently turns Nowood 7 to Norwood 1 (no surgery/grafts)

Major resurgence of lighter than air craft for shipping or consumer travel/leisure

Transoceanic fully autonomous container crossing without onboard crew

Britain finishes HS2

Photonic computing

Smart Contact Lenses with AR Capabilities

Commercial asteroid mining

Datacenters in space

Artificial Wombs for Human Gestation (from conception to birth)

Hypersonic commercial passenger travel

Sand Batteries (Polar Night Energy) to store energy for months.

Joywire

Nuclear powered cargo ships

Room-Temperature Atmospheric-Pressure Superconductors

Fast travel across the globe

Commercial fusion power

AI that produces AAA-level video games via end-user prompts

Medication that adds 30 lbs+ muscle with no major negative health effects

Mars Base

City-scale fully automated underground logistics networks

Nuclear microreactors that can be used anywhere

Nuclear Thermal Rockets

Point-to-Point Suborbital Spaceflight (Regularly Scheduled Passenger Transport)

Cryonics with Successful Revival

Biohybrid Robots with Living Muscle Tissue

Universal Flu Vaccine (effictive against all current and future strains)

Food with bioengineered saturated fat that doesn't raise cholesterol

Commercial satellite to ground power transmission

Self-Actuating Metamaterials for Adaptive Structures in Buildings and Infrastructure

Changing the height of an adult at will

Von Neumann Probe

Orbital Habitats

Self-Replicating Fully-Automated Factories

Fusion Drives

Engineered Symbiotic Microorganism Implants for Human Physiological Augmentation

Human Mind Uploading

Space-to-Earth power stations

Space probes travelling at >=1% speed of light

Direct Cognitive Collaboration

Autonomous Flying Cars in Cities

Cell replacement therapy using synthetic cells

A skyhook space structure in LEO

Human sex change at chromosome level

Human Missions to Mars with Round-Trip Travel Time Under 6 Months

Changing a person's race at will

Room-Temperature Superconducting Transmission Lines in Urban Power Grids

Vacuum Airships

Time travel to the future

Commercial cold fusion

Space Elevator

Quantum Sensors Enabling Detection of Cancer Years Before Symptoms

Temporal Cloaking Device (Hiding Events in Time)

Antimatter bombs

Reality Anchoring Device (Stabilizing Subjective Reality)

1% Dyson sphere coverage

Faster then Light Propulsion

Tiger - Panthera tigris 🥈

Lion - Panthera leo 🥈🥉🥉

Honey Badger - Mellivora capensis 🥈

Wolverine - Gulo gulo

Giant Nematode - Placentonema gigantissima 🥉🥉

Western lowland gorilla - Gorilla gorilla gorilla 🥈🥈

Cat - Felis catus 🥉🥉🥉

Dolphin - Tursiops truncatus

Penguin - Aptenodytes forsteri

Sea Otter - Enhydra lutris

Cape Buffalo - Syncerus caffer caffer

Yellow-Lipped Sea Krait - Laticauda colubrina

Common Bed Bug - Cimex lectularius

Sonoran Desert Sidewinder - Crotalus cerastes cercobombus

Brown Rat - Rattus norvegicus 🥉

House Mouse - Mus musculus domesticus

Sulfur Cave Molly - Poecilia sulphuraria

Coyote - Canis latrans

Leopard seal - Hydrurga leptonyx 🥉

Brownthroated three-toed sloth - Bradypus variegatus 🥉

Meerkat - Suricata suricatta 🥉

Housefly - Musca domestica 🥉🥉🥉

❌Defeated: Elephant - Loxodonta africana 🥈🥈[beat by Giant Nematode]

❌Defeated: Blue Whale - Balaenoptera musculus [beat by Housefly]

❌Defeated: Giant Pacific Octopus - Enteroctopus dofleini 🥉[beat by Ice Worm]

❌Defeated: Red Volcano Sponge - Acarnus Erithacus 🥉[beat by Platypus]

❌Defeated: Feral pigeon - Columba livia urbana [beat by Housefly]

❌Defeated: Great black-backed gull - Larus marinus 🥉 [beat by Western lowland gorilla]

❌Defeated: Hippopotamus - Hippopotamus amphibius 🥈🥈🥈 [beat by Brown Rat]

❌Defeated: Dog - Canis familiaris 🥉🥈 [beat by Leopard seal]

❌Defeated: Giant Panda - Ailuropoda melanoleuca [beat by Polar Bear]

❌Defeated: Axolotl - Ambystoma mexicanum [beat by Great black-backed gull]

❌Defeated: Orca - Orcinus orca [beat by Housefly]

❌Defeated: Hotwheels sisyphus spider - Hotwheels sisyphus [beat by Saltwater Crocodile]

❌Defeated: Polar Bear - Ursus maritimus 🥈 [beat byt Cat]

❌Defeated: Saltwater Crocodile - Crocodylus porosus 🥈🥈🥈🥈 [beat by Red Fox]

🚫Ineligible: Water bear - Milnesium tardigradum

❌Defeated: Ping-Pong Tree Sponge - Chondrocladia concrescens 🥉 [beat by Prehistoric Elephant]

🚫Ineligible: human [I'm shortening this]

🚫Ineligible: Tardigrade (LFG)

❌Defeated: Great White Shark - Carcharodon carcharias [beat by Lion]

🚫Ineligible: [This animal was edited in bad faith]

❌Defeated: Wolf - Canis lupus [beat by Prehistoric Elephant]

❌Defeated: Red Fox - Vulpes vulpes 🥉🥈 [beat by Giant Pacific Octopus]

❌Defeated: Cliff Swallow - Petrochelidon pyrrhonota [beat by Elephant]

❌Defeated: Platypus - Ornithorhynchus anatinus 🥉🥉 [beat by Western Lowland Gorilla]

❌Defeated: Haast's Eagle - Hieraaetus moorei [beat by Prehistoric Elephant]

❌Defeated: Flightless Elephant Bird - Aepyornis maximus [beat by Saltwater Crocodile]

❌Defeated: Prehistoric Elephant - Palaeoloxodon namadicus [beat by Dog]🥉🥉🥈

❌Defeated: Pompeii Worm - Alvinella pompejana [beat by Cat]

❌Defeated: Sperm Whale - Physeter macrocephalus [beat by Ice Worm]

❌Defeated: Great evening bat - Ia io [beat by Lion]

❌Defeated: Funny valentine spider - Funny valentine [beat by Dermophis donaldtrumpi Caecilian]

❌Defeated: Yi qi dinosaur - Yi qi [beat by Elephant]

❌Defeated: Aha ha wasp - Aha ha [beat by Hippopotamus]

❌Defeated: Penis snake - Atretochoana eiselti [beat by Cat]

❌Defeated: Colossal Whale - Perucetus colossus [beat by Meerkat]

❌Defeated: Cuban Cockroach - Panchlora nivea [beat by Hippopotamus]

❌Defeated: Panther Chameleon - Furcifer pardalis [beat by Saltwater Crocodile]

❌Defeated: Giant Dragonfly - Meganeuropsis permiana [beat by Red Fox]

❌Defeated: Triceratops - Triceratops horridus [beat by Red Volcano Sponge]

❌Defeated: Giant Pterosaur - Quetzalcoatlus northropi [beat by Ping-Pong Tree Sponge]

❌Defeated: Lesser Flamingo - Phoeniconaias minor [beat by Honey Badger]

❌Defeated: Kiwi - Apteryx australis [beat by Dog]

❌Defeated: Ice Worm - Mesenchytraeus solifugus 🥉🥉[beat by Tiger]

❌Defeated: Eastern lowland gorilla - Gorilla beringei graueri [beat by Lion]

❌Defeated: Dermophis donaldtrumpi Caecilian - Dermophis donaldtrumpi 🥈[beat by Brownthroated three-toed sloth]

❌Defeated: New World Screwworm - Cochliomyia hominivorax [beat by Hippopotamus]

❌Defeated: Chinese giant salamander - Andrias davidianus [beat by Saltwater Crocodile]

🚫Ineligible: [edited in bad faith]

❌Defeated: Bornean orangutan - Pongo pygmaeus [beat by Giant Nematode]

❌Defeated: Australopithecus - Australopithecus afarensis [beat by Platypus]

The Democratic Party

No clear polarization by close date

The Republican Party

Social Media

Increased awareness/willingness to diagnose

Phones

Mass Psychogenic Illness

Some form of intentional psychological manipulation (algorithmic manipulation, intentional group polarization, psychological warfare, etc.)

There actually is no mental health crisis, it just looks like there is one due to e.g. biased reporting

The postmodern condition becoming more widespread

Hearing about bad things going on (like Climate Change)

REM defficient sleep

Psychoactive drugs (prescribed or recreational)

Socioeconomic hardships

Urbanicity

Microplastics

Nanoplastics

Some sort of ingested/inhaled contaminant

cocaine dust particles passive intake

YES

Create new forms of gambling addiction and financial harm

Provide voting public with better information on candidates chances in elections

Lead to manipulation and misinformation through coordinated betting

Increase polarization by incentivizing extreme predictions

Provide public with better information about impact of policies and new legislation

Bring Jeffrey epstein back to life

YES

YES

Partial blueshift - Almost all blue states shift blue, and about a half of red states shift blue, the rest shift red

Increasing polarization - most red states shift more red, most blue states shift more blue

Partial redshift - Almost all red states shift red, and about a half of blue states shift red, the rest shift blue

Nationwide red shift - Most red AND blue states shift red

Nationwide blue shift - Most red AND blue states shift blue

Hard nationwide blue shift - Almost all red AND blue states shift blue

Hard nationwide red shift - Almost all red AND blue states shift red

YES

35.0-44.9% & D +2.4 to R +2.4 (voters unsatisfied for 4th election in a row)

35.0-44.9% & D +2.5 or more (Trump meh, Dems chose better candidate)

35.0-44.9% & R +2.5 or more (Trump meh, Reps chose better candidate)

≥45% & R +2.5 or more (Trump good)

≤34.9% & D +2.4 to R +2.4 (ultrapolarized negative partisanship, Democracy is cooked)

≥45% & D +2.4 to R +2.4 (less polarization?)

≤34.9% & D +2.5 or more (Trump bad)

≤34.9% & R +2.5 or more (Trump bad, Republicans good)