A group is worried about an approaching fire spreading rapidly through their city. They manage to halt the fire outside the city gates. Meanwhile they build massive physical structures to help them study and guide the fire safely. But these structures are all made of highly flammable dry tinder! If they lose control of the fire, it will now rip through the city much more quickly.

This is a (flawed!1) analogy for Plan A, AIFP's plan for how the world can safely develop superintelligence.

The key risk Plan A addresses is that of an uncontrolled software-driven intelligence explosion. Its remedy is a US-China deal to pause software progress at the brink of the intelligence explosion, while building up massive amounts of compute. This compute could be helpful for making AI safer! But it would also dramatically speed up an intelligence explosion if the deal breaks down. The cure risks making the disease much worse.

In particular, the deal pauses software progress from ~2030, but compute keeps scaling. By 2033 total compute has increased by ~100x and by 2040 by a further ~100x.2 AIFP estimates each 10x in compute speeds up the intelligence explosion by ~5x. So if the deal [...]

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Outline:

(03:38) Plan A's solution

(09:51) Is the alternative better?

(13:16) Empowering China

(14:46) Overall, I'm sympathetic to Plan A

(15:11) Footnotes

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First published:
July 10th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8iDZnQwmvwuxZo3Wx/plan-a-s-problem-with-dry-tinder

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Plan A’s problem with dry tinder” by Tom Davidson

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“Plan A’s problem with dry tinder” by Tom Davidson