LessWrong (Curated & Popular)

This criticism of AI 2040: Plan A by Séb Krier unfortunately seriously mischaracterizes our proposal. It also mostly contains flat assertions, not real argumentation, and the argumentation in it seems quite weak. While we appreciate constructive criticisms of Plan A, such as the ones by Tom Davidson, Richard Ngo, and 1a3orn, we feel the need to correct the issues in Séb's response. First, we’ll go over the specific false representations, and then we’ll give a point-by-point response.

False Representations  

I’m not claiming you shouldn’t prepare and improvise in the dark, but rather that this version of preparing bakes in too much and leaves little space for the effective but uncomfortable trial-and-effort that real life requires.

The exact opposite is true. Plan A is extremely iterative. In the status quo, there is trial and error, but ultimately companies aren’t going to choose the safer or more societally beneficial path, they are going to choose what the market wants. In Plan A there is much more time for AI companies to gain evidence and for governments to respond reasonably to the sweeping changes. Thanks to total transparency and broad deployment, all of this evidence is accessible to academics, independent researchers [...]

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Outline:

(00:44) False Representations

(05:02) Point-by-point response

(29:54) Conclusion

The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:

July 14th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RPgHythvMKh6eG9pS/our-response-to-seb-krier-on-plan-a

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

content warnings: depictions of human and anthro nudity, discussion of bestiality, modern art

Credit where it's due: it is genuinely, unironically baller for the Whitney museum to make the exhibit about how a disabled artist wants to fuck their dog the first one that people see when they attend the prestigious Whitney Biennial, their every-two-year showcase of new and emerging American talents. You know, the one that's supposed to be a barometer of where America is at these days.

Unfortunately, not only do they fail to commit to the bit, the critics then fail to point this out and condemn them for it. Like, here is how one art critic at ArtReview describes it:

Visitors first encounter Emilie Louise Gossiaux's Kong Play (2025) – a hundred or so small, brightly coloured snowman-shaped ceramics arranged on a low two-tiered pedestal. These sculptures are modelled after Kong chew toys, a tribute to the artist's guide dog (Gossiaux lost their vision in a bicycle accident in 2012). Accompanying Kong Play are variously titled ballpoint pen and crayon drawings by Gossiaux that depict the artist playing with a jaunty, sometimes bipedal, white canine. The exhibition thus opens tenderly – without fanfare, without friction.

[...]

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Outline:

(03:53) Gossiaux's Recent Body of Work

[... 1 more section]

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First published:

July 13th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/sFkYA5CwZCWYQ9nzB/the-whitney-biennial-should-admit-that-emilie-gossiaux-wants

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Abstract:

We already know enough to act. I wish we were in a world where research was the bottleneck, but the main constraint on AI safety is no longer a shortage of clever policy ideas: best practices already exist and are not being applied or enforced, and a serious international (or even just national) regulatory regime would probably cut most of the risk.
They are not applied because awareness is low. The people who narrate and enforce AI policy mostly do not believe in the problem. I estimate that a majority of the top ~100–1,000 most influential policymakers worldwide have never had a single serious conversation about catastrophic risk, and this is the main reason they are not worried[1]. Even among the civil-society organizations that showed up to the UN Global Dialogue, exactly one of the 1,534 written submissions mentions "takeover", and less than 1% mention x-risks.
They've never had the conversation because our field under-invests in having it. Status rewards research over advocacy (~3.6 researchers per advocate in US AI safety); many organizations self-censor; funders treat repetition as redundancy, even though repetition is how anyone actually gets convinced. Meanwhile, the industry secured 7× as many meetings with the European Commission [...]
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Outline:

(03:29) 1. -- The bottleneck is political will, not research

(03:44) What do I call "political will"?

(05:10) The best practices we already have are not being applied

(07:28) We need to go from plan D to plan A: more seriousness and coordination

[... 31 more sections]

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First published:

July 11th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EexsebbYhbe2gXkPP/the-current-bottleneck-is-political-will-not-research

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Some context for this post: I’ve been working part-time as a consultant for the AI Futures Project over the last year. Most of the work I’ve done for them has involved critiquing and suggesting improvements for their AI 2040 scenario—some of which were addressed, and some of which weren’t. To their credit, they asked me to write up my remaining critiques into a post that would accompany its launch. In the rest of this post I’ll discuss my three biggest high-level criticisms of AI 2040.

Before doing so, I want to emphasize that there are many interesting and thought-provoking details in the scenario. I’ve focused on the high-level framing of the scenario because that's where my main disagreements lie; given the scope of these disagreements, it's hard to evaluate the details.

Since the AI Futures Project paid me to develop and write this criticism, you shouldn’t take this as a fully unbiased perspective. However, they haven’t reviewed this piece, and in general have been open-minded about receiving criticism (as their request for me to post this today demonstrates).

Finally: the preview image for the substack version of this post comes from this video of a dad shouting to his [...]

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First published:

July 9th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BBd2EJywf2xXftyFn/selective-optimism-a-critique-of-ai-2040

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This is a link post. For the past year, we at the AI Futures Project have been sinking most of our time into our next big scenario. Now it's done!

It's called AI 2040: Plan A.

It's called Plan A because it's a recommendation, not a prediction. It's what we think should happen, not what will happen, though we think it's plausible enough to aim for.

It's called AI 2040 because in it, they delay the creation of superintelligence to 2040. It would have happened much sooner (in 2030, to be precise) if not for decisive action on the part of the US and Chinese governments.

As with AI 2027, summaries don’t really do it justice, since the whole point was to be detailed and comprehensive and work things out step by step rather than rely on high-level abstractions like doom or utopia.

Read the scenario at ai-2040.com. You can listen to it on audio, or view it on mobile, but the experience is significantly better on a normal computer.

What's next for us?

Well, first we are going to respond to comments and otherwise engage with whatever conversation, responses, critiques, etc. that [...]

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First published:

July 9th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pFzctpJBat95SrCyC/ai-2040-plan-a


Linkpost URL:
https://www.ai-2040.com/

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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