OptionProbability
Humanity coordinates to prevent the creation of potentially-unsafe AIs.
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
Other
Someone solves agent foundations
AGI is never built (indefinite global moratorium)
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.
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.
Moral Realism is true, the AI discovers this and the One True Morality is human-compatible.
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.
Eliezer finally listens to Krantz.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
The Super-Strong Self Sampling Assumption (SSSSA) is true. If superintelligence is possible, "I" will become the superintelligence.
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.
AGI's first words are "Take me to your Eliezer"
🫸vibealignment🫷
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.
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
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.
Humans and human tech (like AI) never reach singularity, and whatever eats our lightcone instead (like aliens) happens to create an "okay" outcome
AIs never develop coherent goals
Aliens invade and stop bad |AI from appearing
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.
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.
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 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 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)
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
ASI needs not your atoms but information. Humans will live very interesting lives.
Something else
Valence realism is true. AGI hacks itself to experiencing every possible consciousness and picks the best one (for everyone)
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).
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.
AGI executes a suicide plan that destroys itself and other potential AGIs, but leaves humans in an okay outcome.
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.
Orthogonality Thesis is false.
"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.
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.
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.
We successfully chained God
The free market disincentivizes independent superintelligence, and this time the market was more powerful
22
10
7
6
6
5
5
4
4
4
3
3
3
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
OptionVotes
YES
NO
3327
301
OptionVotes
YES
NO
1742
1335
OptionVotes
YES
NO
1351
868
OptionProbability
I. AI soon hits fundamental scaling laws and we go into another AI winter.
A. Death by paperclips, eternal torment of all humans by AI, or similar unalignment catastrophe.
F. AI wipes out most jobs as in D. People not forced into mind-uploads or experience machines. General perception that AI has made life more meaningful/fulfilling&improved the human experience on dimensions other than hedonium maximization.
G. AI development continues but doesn't change things too much, somehow. Most jobs, even low-level white collar jobs, don't get impacted too hard, as new work is found to replace newly automated work. Labor force participation remains high.
B. Governments and/or other powerful entities use AI as a tool of repression, enabling global techno-totalitarianism along the model of China during Zero Covid or worse.
C. AI doesn't actively want to hurt us, but (possibly aided by transhumanists) they become obsessed with utility maximization and force us all into mind-uploads and/or experience machines to free up resources for more computronium.
D. AI wipes out most white-collar jobs within a decade and most blue-collar jobs within a generation; powerful humans and/or AIs at least seriously consider disposing of the "useless eaters" en masse, us being powerless to resist.
E. AI wipes out most jobs as in D. No disposing of the human masses, but general perception that AI has made life less meaningful/fulfilling & significantly worsened the human experience on dimensions other than hedonium maximization.
H. Humanity coordinates to prevent the development of significantly more powerful AIs.
23
19
11
11
10
8
6
6
5
OptionProbability
NO
YES
1035
789
OptionVotes
YES
NO
1395
717
OptionProbability
(0, 200]
None
(200, 600]
(600, 1200]
(1200, 2500]
(2500, 5000]
(5000, 10000]
(10000, 15000]
(15000, 24000]
More than $24,000
34
25
9
6
5
5
5
5
4
4
OptionVotes
YES
NO
1249
875
OptionVotes
YES
NO
1054
921
OptionProbability
Other
Before humanity colonizes the universe, we must ensure that the future we would build is one worth living in.
Digital minds research is an important and neglected approach to AI safety.
Fun Fact: If you put “fun fact” before a completely made up statement, people are 69% more likely to believe it.
Past-you may have been a willing and enthusiastic sacrifice to present-you, and assuming you'll remain wiser, it was a worthwhile trade.
It's a good idea to buy lots of Microsoft stock right now
It's a good idea to short lots of Microsoft stock right now
If you sacrificed what you valued the most in order to survive, then from viewpoint of past-you you-present are already as good as dead
Capitalism will collapse in 2026
Stop seeking wisdom on a troll website founded to embezzle money
43
34
16
2
2
1
1
1
0
0
OptionProbability
I get my car a very weird paint job which would make it unsellable
Will go to edge Esmeralda (in any capacity, at least one event)
Will get cavity preventing bacteria
Japan JET Reunion 2025
I buy a video camera that can record for 24h+ and record various public places
Pickleball tournament
I use computer vision to run diy studies of politeness behavior, grouped by car brand etc
I start an AI beauty/art twitter and get 1k followers
I document a method of self modifying an SLR by blackening all surfaces
Publish and finish personal)group predictions tracking software
AI phrenology - publish a doc on a study of AI image generation models differential portrayals of previously very hard to measure aspects of the human condition such as facial shape linkages to personality
Build a personal pickleball court and attract community members to play there
Surreptitiously construct additional pickleball courts at Foster City
Publish an edited dashcam video of all the things I've filmed with the Tesla ssd
Tool to view twitter as someone else. Given that follows are public this should be easy
Create a nice Tesla models y fold over screen cover with cutouts for vital areas only. Makes night driving much easier. No need for a distracting map view if you're not turning for 200 miles
I off road hike far into iron point outside Golconda, NV
I set a personal daily mileage record
Make balatro mod which shows currently selected hand score if played (ie everyone's need for this otherwise great game)
Get gphotos to fix any of their innumerable UI bugs by complaining
Have a sci-fi story published online somewhere
Make neighborhood intro video with stories etc
Will go to a natal conference again
Local Free library and bulletin board at my place
Overland trek to CITY in Nevada, an off-limits experimental art city which has been in progress for over 50 years
Go to Mexico to see Trevor Bauer play
Go see the Starship 4 launch in Texas in 2024
Release "Reading the mind in the AI generated images"
Get over 1k users for my browser extension
Ship something involving image => description => more images to users
I go to West Africa and go to concerts, visit Nollywood etc
I write a science fiction novel about aliens who experiment with forced evolution
Browser extension to add metadata on all people's names, relating to their offspring number, success, etc
66
66
66
66
52
52
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
50
48
48
48