Plan A：AI放缓与中美算力管控方案引争议

Introducing Plan A

The folks who brought you AI 2027, a so far remarkably accurate set of predictions despite those predictions having seemed freaky to many at the time, now bring you their positive vision that involves more freaky predictions: Plan A.

These guys have rather strong prediction track records. In addition to AI 2027, among other things, Daniel Kokotajlo has What 2026 Looks Like (which is remarkably similar to what 2026 looks like) and Ryan Greenblatt, who is also the chief scientist at Redwood Research, was the #2 most accurate AI forecaster in 2025 out of 413 entries. Past performance is as always no guarantee of future success.

If you’re the type to read at least some of my posts, or if you thought AI 2027 was worth reading, I recommend reading Plan A.

There is also an unofficial visual novel version, for minds very different from my own who would want that.

To be clear up front: I am not endorsing Plan A. I am not suggesting we should go off and try to enact Plan A as written. There is a lot more work to do and a lot of potential problems and downsides to grapple with.

I do think we should do that work, and give it, and its details, serious consideration.

The bulk of this post is engaging with various objections, in progressively more detail. If you only need the highlights, you can safely stop after Thus Selective Optimism.

Table of Contents

• Introducing Plan A.
• You Only Get Five Words.
• Proactive Response To Objections.
• Initial Introductions and Endorsements.
• A Positive Vision.
• Alternative Plans.
• Plan S for Shutdown.
• Something (Unexpectedly Good) Ever Happens.
• Thus Selective Optimism.
• Quickly, There’s No Time.
• Race Conditions.
• This Is A Lot Of Diffusion And Economic Growth.
• Living In China.
• Planning For Shifting Overton Windows Is Essential.
• The Standard Handwave.
• Some Equate Any Controls Over Compute To Authoritarian Dystopia And Those Same People Mostly Think Superintelligence Won’t Happen.
• Vitalik Buterin Is Right, The Crux Is Future AI Capability Levels.
• The Authoritarian Objection.
• Concepts Of A Plan.
• The Kitchen Sink.
• Selective Claims Of Authoritarianism.
• You Either Can Steer The Future Or You Cannot.
• Cooperative Alignment.

You Only Get Five Words

As always, most people who interact with Plan A will not read it.

They will condense it into a few key sentences.

There is clear agreement on which sentences survive and which do not.

The top 5 things people will discuss will largely be, in descending order of focus:

• We should slow down AI development.
• To do that, we should make a deal with China.
• We should monitor the world’s major sources of compute.
• We should use mutually assured compute destruction (a version of MAIM).
• Things will still happen super fast and feel like it, e.g. ASI by 2040, with vast economic growth before this.

Axios’s Ashley Gold compacts the plan thus:

Ashley Gold: The group behind a 2025 report predicting dire outcomes from AI development is out with a new prescription: To avoid dangerous outcomes from superintelligent AI, slow everything down.

That’s not technically wrong, but there is an obvious misinterpretation if you allow that much compression.

And includes this very good quote:

Daniel Kokotajlo: We think it’s still good to recommend what would actually be good, even if you think that your audience is probably not going to listen.

The strongest and loudest objection, and in some ways the best one, is some form of:

Plan A Detractors: Superintelligence is not coming any time soon. The threat is not real, so we shouldn’t be paying high costs to deal with it. There is no reason to slow down that which is already slow enough on its own.

At the extreme you get people like Joshua Saxe wondering why people didn’t learn their lesson from what didn’t happen to radiologists, and so on. Le sigh, but I appreciate saying it straight, and I appreciated Timothy Lee’s reaction even more:

Timothy B. Lee: I struggle with what to say about the new AI 2040: Plan A website. It all seems so implausible to me that I’m not sure where to start. There’s an epistemic chasm between those who think superintelligence implies near-omnipotence and those (like me) who don’t.

I’ve found that people believe it at such a deeply intuitive level that it’s hard to have a meaningful discussion about it. Each side finds it baffling to encounter people with the opposite intuition, and on some level can’t believe they’re being serious.

I would hope that with enough time I could get Timothy Lee to come around, since he has established he takes arguments seriously, but so far I’ve been unable to find a compelling argument to convince such folks that for practical purposes yes sufficiently advanced AIs could and would do all the things.

I think the premise in the Detractors argument, as stated above, is wrong. I think superintelligence is likely to be coming soon, as do the labs. Many do not agree. If you are one of those who do not agree, then you should absolutely not want to implement Plan A, or anything like Plan A, and you should say so plainly.

This is true whether or not you want to further engage with the scenario anyway, to consider the hypothetical where you are wrong. That’s up to you, and ‘no’ is a respectable response.

Top 10 criticisms other are, translated into my language (not intended to pass ITTs):

• America would never do it. You don’t understand America (or the government).
• China would never do it. You don’t understand China (or its government).
• This scenario doesn’t understand that this is a race. Or, this scenario places too much emphasis on the framing that this is now being seen and treated as a race.
• This is still too fast, or this is far too slow. Unacceptable.
• This is unnecessary, market can handle alignment, it is all easy, stop worrying. You warned things might eventually be not fine but so far everything is fine. I am opposed to anything vibing with the words ‘slowdown’ or ‘pause’ and will try to incept that any such action is impossible and discredited or ‘naive.’
• This involves paying real costs and restrictions. I thought this was America. Controls over compute equal authoritarian (totalitarian?!) dystopia and all that.
• This still would not work, either it does not work technically for various reasons or alignment is too hard. We need a full pause. Or, in the better version: There aren’t enough worlds where this turns losses into wins.
• The economic projections are way too optimistic.
• The scenario is confusing: It conflates realistic prediction with aspiration. Also people will focus only on particular key points, so you should obfuscate those.
• The scenario involves unlikely things happening. Nothing ever happens. This is something happening. Also you made it up. Never gonna happen.

A lot of these being symmetrical is a sign that the scenario is doing something right.

My basic responses to these objections:

• Not with that attitude. If true, get cracking on figuring out an alternative.
• Not with that attitude. If true, get cracking on figuring out an alternative.
• I think this is roughly the right amount of talking like this is a race.
• Slower would be better if possible, it’s a question of what is achievable.
• If you think this, then you should oppose things like Plan A, but you’re wrong.
• Yes, to deal with big things you often have to pay real costs, but do not equate such actions with authoritarianism let alone totalitarianism. This plan tries hard to minimize this downside. If you have better implementation ideas, speak up.
• I think this is a topic for healthy debate and a strong objection.
• I think they are overly optimistic, but not crazy, and I think the plan and scenario survive having much less dramatic medium-term economic impacts.
• This is the nature of such a scenario. I think they did the best they could.