Crossposted from my Substack.

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Suppose the President summons the AI CEOs and his top national security advisors to an emergency meeting at the White House.

He has become extremely concerned about superintelligence — the possibility that AIs far smarter than humanity combined slip beyond our ability to correct or shut down. If that happens, there is no way back. The President is concerned humanity could become permanently out of the driver's seat of its own future. He wants to figure out what to do.

The reaction is panic, chaos, confusion.

The President asks questions. The AI companies are blazing toward superintelligence at high speed — can we slow down as we approach the dangerous thresholds? …Some of the AI companies say they don’t have a good plan to slow down or stop, especially as their competitors may just undercut them if they do. What's that about?

What's going on with China — can we get them to pace as well? Can we get a deal without Beijing sneakily catching up and maybe surpassing us? And if there's no deal to be had, what then?

More like the Cuban Missile Crisis than the NPT

I sometimes hear people [...]

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Outline:

(01:21) More like the Cuban Missile Crisis than the NPT

(03:24) A scramble and then three phases

(05:19) The scramble: What questions does the President ask?

(09:40) The mechanics of Phase 1

(12:37) A lot of verification work right now is focused on the wrong things

(14:50) What ought we do?

(17:37) Getting to a good scramble

(18:21) Footnotes

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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First published:
September 7th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/S7e7swkWDyKdtvRqM/the-scramble-getting-in-position-to-pace-the-frontier

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Five-stage flowchart of US-China AI agreement phases toward safe superintelligence.

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“The Scramble: getting in position to pace the frontier” by Peter Wildeford

LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“The Scramble: getting in position to pace the frontier” by Peter Wildeford