AI 2027 (Kokotajlo et al., 2025)

PLEASE READ THE ARTICLE AND BRING A COPY WITH YOU TO THE DISCUSSION. We'll be following the article closely for the two hours. (I usually bring mine via tablet)

When: Wednesday 27th August 2025, 6 pm – 8 pm.

Where: The Castle Inn, 36 Castle Street, Cambridge, UK. (Most likely we'll be at one of the large tables upstairs.)

Paper: AI 2027. Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, Romeo Dean

Link: https://ai-2027.com/

Spotify audio link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4xO2ElEhpaq0nX2MLoYzmb?si=W_pzGMcCQQSG13znXQuHvA

We encourage well-informed and good-faith critiques of the papers we read (Make sure you read the paper!) With this in mind, here is some further reading (including but not limited to):

Responses to critiques: https://blog.ai-futures.org/p/ai-2027-media-reactions-criticism

Timeline models critique:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PAYfmG2aRbdb74mEp/a-deep-critique-of-ai-2027-s-bad-timeline-models

Gary Marcus: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-ai-2027-scenario-how-realistic

Thoughts on AI 2027: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Yzcb5mQ7iq4DFfXHx/thoughts-on-ai-2027

Excerpt from AI 2027 article:

The CEOs of OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic have all predicted that AGI will arrive within the next 5 years. Sam Altman has said OpenAI is setting its sights on “superintelligence in the true sense of the word” and the “glorious future.”

What might that look like? We wrote AI 2027 to answer that question. Claims about the future are often frustratingly vague, so we tried to be as concrete and quantitative as possible, even though this means depicting one of many possible futures.

We wrote two endings: a “slowdown” and a “race” ending. However, AI 2027 is not a recommendation or exhortation. Our goal is predictive accuracy.

We encourage you to debate and counter this scenario. We hope to spark a broad conversation about where we’re headed and how to steer toward positive futures. We’re planning to give out thousands in prizes to the best alternative scenarios.