In AI 2027, one company called OpenBrain dominates the AI race in the US. Looking around at the current state of affairs at the start of 2026, however, there seem to be a few AGI companies jockeying for the lead — and it stands to reason that this will continue through 2027. Below is a scenario exploring a world where this trend does continue. In this scenario, the leading AGI company OpenBrain has two strong competitors, NeuroMorph and Elaris Labs, and going into 2027 they both lag only one month behind OpenBrain in the AI race.

This scenario has one other key difference from AI 2027. In the Slowdown ending of AI 2027, OpenBrain learns that its most capable model, Agent-4, is misaligned, and proceeds to shut it down. We think it is plausible that at this level of capability and misalignment, Agent-4 would not “go down without a fight.” This scenario explores what might happen if Agent-4 were to act differently.

These can be thought of as the two main “independent variables” of the scenario. The rest of the scenario unfolds very differently from AI 2027, but most of the divergence stems from extrapolating what we think would happen if these two things were to change. ^[1] Beyond this, there are a number of more minor assumptions that differ from AI 2027: alignment is slightly easier, the US government reacts somewhat more competently to the intelligence explosion, and AI’s persuasive and manipulative abilities play a larger role.

Notably, one thing held constant is the scenario timeline: changing too many independent variables at once would muddy the analysis. The year 2027 is not our median forecast for the arrival of superhuman AI; it was the team’s modal (most likely) year at the time of AI 2027’s publication, and remains a top possibility. More importantly, we think that many of the dynamics illustrated in this scenario would unfold similarly if it were to take place in 2030, or 2035. The arc of the scenario depends more on the speed of AI takeoff than it does on timelines, and we still think a fast takeoff is highly plausible.

At the end of each time period, the scenario includes a diagram illustrating the state of the AI race. Refer to the diagram captions to understand what each component means.

The scenario is about 6,000 words long, roughly a 20-40 minute read. If you would like to read a summary instead (~700 words), you can skip to the bottom....

Posts

Wikitag Contributions

Comments

Posts

Wikitag Contributions

Comments