This is part of the MIRI Single Author Series. Pieces in this series represent the beliefs and opinions of their named authors, and do not claim to speak for all of MIRI.

Okay, I'm annoyed at people covering AI 2027 burying the lede, so I'm going to try not to do that. The authors predict a strong chance that all humans will be (effectively) dead in 6 years, and this agrees with my best guess about the future. (My modal timeline has loss of control of Earth mostly happening in 2028, rather than late 2027, but nitpicking at that scale hardly matters.) Their timeline to transformative AI also seems pretty close to the perspective of frontier lab CEO's (at least Dario Amodei, and probably Sam Altman) and the aggregate market opinion of both Metaculus and Manifold!

If you look on those market platforms you get graphs like this:

Both [...]

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Outline:

(02:23) Mode ≠ Median

(04:50) Theres a Decent Chance of Having Decades

(06:44) More Thoughts

(08:55) Mid 2025

(09:01) Late 2025

(10:42) Early 2026

(11:18) Mid 2026

(12:58) Late 2026

(13:04) January 2027

(13:26) February 2027

(14:53) March 2027

(16:32) April 2027

(16:50) May 2027

(18:41) June 2027

(19:03) July 2027

(20:27) August 2027

(22:45) September 2027

(24:37) October 2027

(26:14) November 2027 (Race)

(29:08) December 2027 (Race)

(30:53) 2028 and Beyond (Race)

(34:42) Thoughts on Slowdown

(38:27) Final Thoughts

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First published:
April 9th, 2025

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

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Graph showing predicted arrival timeline for

Graph showing projected data from 2025-2050, with peak around 2025-2027.

Graph showing probability distribution curve, peaking around 2020, extending to 2199.

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“Thoughts on AI 2027” by Max Harms

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Thoughts on AI 2027” by Max Harms