A Is For America

It's increasingly clear that nobody has a plan for if this AI thing turns out to be real. Some people have suggestions, but they're all things like "regulate a little more" or "regulate a little less" or "react to things as they come up". This won't be enough. Not just because things may move too quickly - although they will - but because in order to regulate or react, you need to know what you're aiming for, and it's increasingly clear that people can't even visualize what AI going well could look like. What would it take to honestly tell our children that we rose to the occasion, to make the AI transition go down alongside the American Revolution and D-Day as one of our country's finest hours? If your brain sputters and throws an error message at the question, isn't that a problem?

It's a total coincidence that Plan A comes out the week after America's 250th birthday. It was supposed to come out earlier, but got delayed. Then it was supposed to come out later, but got pushed forward.

Still, the saying goes "A wizard is never late, nor is he early; he arrives exactly when he means to." And if anyone qualifies as wizards, it's Daniel Kokotajlo and his team of forecasters at the AI Futures Project. I previously wrote about Daniel's eerie accuracy over the 2021 - 2025 period. Since then, they've gained worldwide fame for their AI 2027 scenario, which predicted the rise and quick takeover of coding agents in early 2026, plus something like the fight over Fable1.

Plan A isn't another prediction. It's a wish list, a positive vision, a road map for navigating the future. It describes the best course of action that Daniel and the AI Futures Project can come up with, and what would happen if we took it.

"Really? You got America a policy paper for its 250th birthday? Doesn't America already have enough policy papers?" Sort of, but it's not exactly a policy paper. It starts in a timeline similar to that of AI 2027, on track for a poorly-controlled intelligence explosion that either ends the world or dooms it to permanent techno-oligarchy. But this time, America is blessed with some extra foresight and determination, and makes only good choices (all non-Americans behave naturally, including trying to thwart America when incentivized to do so). It gives a year-by-year description of this best-of-all-possible-worlds, from now through 2040, as predicted by the best AI forecasters alive, with over a dozen supplements explaining all the implementation details.

This is a crazy thing to try releasing. Daniel gave me several justifications for doing it anyway, but the one I remember most is that it's supposed to be a floor. When some politician proposes a data center ban, or says that we have to gut safety regulation to compete with China, or promises a job retraining program, think to yourself: does this person have a vision for where all of this ends up? If so, is it as good as Plan A? If not, consider demanding that they do better.

I did a lot of writing for AI 2027 and was listed as a co-author. Some of my writing made it into Plan A too, but it was a bit less. The difference is of degree rather than kind, but because of this - and to give me more latitude to discuss it the way I like with less PR blowback - we decided not to put me as a co-author this time. I continue to be proud of having a part in this, small as it may be.

(related: everything in this post is my opinion only, and not officially endorsed by the AI Futures Project)

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/introducing-plan-a