Daniel Kokotajlo

AI 2027: What Superintelligence Looks Like

In 2021 I wrote what became my most popular blog post: What 2026 Looks Like. I intended to keep writing predictions all the way to AGI and beyond, but chickened out and just published up till 2026. Well, it's finally time. I'm back, and this time I have a team with me: the AI Futures Project. We've written a concrete scenario of what we think the future of AI will look like. We are highly uncertain, of course, but we hope this story will rhyme with reality enough to help us all prepare for what's ahead. You really should go read it on the website instead of here, it's much better. There's a sliding dashboard that updates the stats as you scroll through the scenario! But I've nevertheless copied the first half of the story below. I look forward to reading your comments. Mid 2025: Stumbling Agents The world sees its first glimpse of AI agents. Advertisements for computer-using agents emphasize the term “personal assistant”: you can prompt them with tasks like “order me a burrito on DoorDash” or “open my budget spreadsheet and sum this month’s expenses.” They will check in with you as needed: for example, to ask you to confirm purchases.[1] Though more advanced than previous iterations like Operator, they struggle to get widespread usage.[2] Meanwhile, out of public focus, more specialized coding and research agents are beginning to transform their professions. The AIs of 2024 could follow specific instructions: they could turn bullet points into emails, and simple requests into working code. In 2025, AIs function more like employees. Coding AIs increasingly look like autonomous agents rather than mere assistants: taking instructions via Slack or Teams and making substantial code changes on their own, sometimes saving hours or even days.[3] Research agents spend half an hour scouring the Internet to answer your question. The agents are impressive in theory (and in cherry-picked examples), but in practice unreliable. AI twitter is full of stories about tasks bu

686Apr 3, 2025

Daniel Kokotajlo

Message

Was a philosophy PhD student, left to work at AI Impacts, then Center on Long-Term Risk, then OpenAI. Quit OpenAI due to losing confidence that it would behave responsibly around the time of AGI. Now executive director of the AI Futures Project. I subscribe to...

32785

4036

111

3650

Grading AI 2027's 2025 Predictions

AI 2027 laid out a detailed scenario for how AI would progress from 2025 through 2027, including quantitative predictions and qualitative descriptions of the AI landscape. Now that we’re in early 2026, we can grade how its 2025 predictions compare to reality! This is exciting to us because we put...

Feb 1363

Clarifying how our AI timelines forecasts have changed since AI 2027

Some recent news articles discuss updates to our AI timelines since AI 2027, most notably our new timelines and takeoff model, the AI Futures Model (see blog post announcement).[1] While we’re glad to see broader discussion of AI timelines, these articles make substantial errors in their reporting. Please don’t assume...

Jan 2767

AI Futures Timelines and Takeoff Model: Dec 2025 Update

We’ve significantly upgraded our timelines and takeoff model! It predicts when AIs will reach key capability milestones: for example, Automated Coder / AC (full automation of coding) and superintelligence / ASI (much better than the best humans at virtually all cognitive tasks). This post will briefly explain how the model...

Dec 31, 2025144

Response to titotal’s critique of our AI 2027 timelines model

Introduction In June, a Substack/LessWrong/EA Forum user named titotal wrote “A deep critique of AI 2027’s bad timeline models”. Our original model that they were critiquing can be found here, with a brief overview below.[1] In a nutshell, we disagree with most of titotal’s criticisms. While they pointed out a...

Dec 16, 202545

Vitalik's Response to AI 2027

Daniel notes: This is a linkpost for Vitalik's post. I've copied the text below so that I can mark it up with comments. ... Special thanks to Balvi volunteers for feedback and review In April this year, Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander and others released what they describe as "a scenario...

Jul 11, 2025124

My pitch for the AI Village

I think the AI Village should be funded much more than it currently is; I’d wildly guess that the AI safety ecosystem should be funding it to the tune of $4M/year. I have decided to donate $100k. Here is why. First, what is the village? Here’s a brief summary from...

Jun 24, 2025178

METR's Observations of Reward Hacking in Recent Frontier Models

METR just made a lovely post detailing many examples they've found of reward hacks by frontier models. Unlike the reward hacks of yesteryear, these models are smart enough to know that what they are doing is deceptive and not what the company wanted them to do. I tried to copy...

Jun 9, 2025100

Load More (7/121)

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

Daniel Kokotajlo

Daniel Kokotajlo

Daniel Kokotajlo

AI 2027: What Superintelligence Looks Like

What 2026 looks like

Taboo "Outside View"

AI Timelines

Daniel Kokotajlo

Grading AI 2027's 2025 Predictions

Clarifying how our AI timelines forecasts have changed since AI 2027

AI Futures Timelines and Takeoff Model: Dec 2025 Update

Response to titotal’s critique of our AI 2027 timelines model

Vitalik's Response to AI 2027

My pitch for the AI Village

METR's Observations of Reward Hacking in Recent Frontier Models

AI 2027: What Superintelligence Looks Like

What 2026 looks like

Taboo "Outside View"

AI Timelines

Grading AI 2027's 2025 Predictions

Clarifying how our AI timelines forecasts have changed since AI 2027

AI Futures Timelines and Takeoff Model: Dec 2025 Update

Response to titotal’s critique of our AI 2027 timelines model

Vitalik's Response to AI 2027

My pitch for the AI Village

METR's Observations of Reward Hacking in Recent Frontier Models