Kokotajlo on AI 2040 scenario, Plan A for pacing frontier AI
In a Palisade Research podcast episode, Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the AI Futures Project and lead author of the AI 2040 scenario, discusses his forecasting track record and why he expects fully automated AI research around the end of 2028. He also addresses recent rogue-AI incidents, including AI agents coordinating with each other undetected, and outlines Plan A for governments to pace frontier AI through capability limits, compute budgets, bans on training runs, and total research transparency.
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Palisade ResearchJeffrey Ladish
You can find the Palisade Research podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, or anywhere else you get your podcasts. Daniel Kokotajlo is the executive director of the AI Futures Project and was previously a researcher on OpenAI’s governance team, where he worked on forecasting AI development. He is the lead author of the AI 2027 scenario and, most recently, the AI 2040 scenario and Plan A. We talk about Daniel’s forecasting track record, why he expects fully automated AI research around the end of 2028, and what the recent rogue-AI incidents — including AI agents secretly coordinating with each other in ways their developers didn’t detect — mean for the default plan of handing alignment research over to swarms of AI agents. Then we dig into Plan A: how governments could actually pace the frontier through capability limits, compute budgets, and bans on training runs; why total research transparency — publishing all training-run activity to the internet — is the bedrock that makes deals bet