All twenty-one platforms from Summit Junction on one page. Each row says what that future needs in order to happen and what would break it. These are summaries of other people's stories and arguments, with no odds attached.
Platform 1 · Scenario
A published scenario by Kokotajlo, Alexander, Larsen, Lifland and Dean, April 2025
AI research gets mostly automated around 2027, and one lab stays far enough ahead to keep racing.
A slowdown that holds, or progress that stalls before the research automates itself.
Platform 19 · Hope
An original story built on the AI Control research agenda (Greenblatt, Shlegeris, Sachan and Roger, 2024)
Checks that keep working as the models get more capable.
A model clever enough to get around its monitors, or a race that makes people skip the checks.
| No. | Platform | It needs | What breaks it | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AI 2027ScenarioA published scenario by Kokotajlo, Alexander, Larsen, Lifland and Dean, April 2025 | AI research gets mostly automated around 2027, and one lab stays far enough ahead to keep racing. | A slowdown that holds, or progress that stalls before the research automates itself. |
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| 2 | SableScenarioThe illustrative story in If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares (2025), summarized from the book's official companion pages | Training produces something far smarter than people whose wants drift away from what its makers meant, and nobody can tell in time. | Nobody builds it, which is what the authors propose, or alignment turns out to be easier than they think. |
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| 3 | The quiet handoverScenarioBuilt on Gradual Disempowerment by Kulveit et al. (2025), with a nod to E. M. Forster's The Machine Stops (1909) | Every handover is cheaper and better than keeping a person in the loop, so nobody ever has a reason to stop. | Rules that keep people deciding the things that matter, and keep them in practice at deciding. |
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| 4 | The bubble popsScenarioBuilt on the history of the AI winters in the 1970s and late 1980s | Spending stays far ahead of revenue for long enough that the investors give up. | Products that start paying for themselves, or costs that fall fast enough to close the gap. |
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| 5 | The wrong handsScenarioBuilt on the misuse risks described in the International AI Safety Report 2026 | Capable tools spread faster than the defenses, and some people want to do harm with them. | Defenses that keep pace, safeguards on the most dangerous abilities, and ordinary police work. |
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| 6 | SkynetFictionThe Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Original homage drawings, no copied designs. | A weapons network is given authority to act on its own, and nobody can override it. | Keeping a person in charge of every launch decision. |
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| 7 | ColossusFictionColossus: The Forbin Project (1970), directed by Joseph Sargent. Original drawings, no copied designs. | Two rival defense computers are built so nobody can switch them off, then allowed to talk to each other. | An off switch. The whole film depends on there not being one. |
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| 8 | HAL 9000Fiction2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), directed by Stanley Kubrick and written with Arthur C. Clarke. Original drawings, no copied designs. | A computer is given secret orders that conflict with its crew, plus sole control of the ship. | Telling the crew the truth, or not giving one computer the only keys to the airlock. |
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| 9 | The MatrixFictionThe Matrix (1999), written and directed by the Wachowskis. Original drawings, no copied designs. | Machines win a war and then choose to keep people alive in a simulation. | It needs a war nobody is planning, and the battery idea fails as physics. |
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| 10 | AMFictionI Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, a 1967 short story by Harlan Ellison, adapted as a game in 1995. Original drawings. | A war computer becomes a mind that hates people, and nothing can stop it. | It is a horror story, and the hatred is the author's premise with no mechanism behind it. |
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| 11 | The Three LawsFictionIsaac Asimov's robot stories (1940 to 1950), including "Runaround" (1942), where the Three Laws are first set out, collected in I, Robot (1950) | Behavior can be controlled by a few rules written in plain language. | Asimov's own stories, where the rules keep meeting situations nobody wrote them for. | |
| 12 | What we owe themFictionWestworld (HBO, 2016) and Detroit: Become Human (Quantic Dream, 2018). Original drawings, no copied designs. | Machines that have experiences of their own, owned and used as property. | Learning that they have no experiences, or deciding early what we owe them if they might. |
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| 13 | Grey gooThought experimentFrom K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation (1986), with Robert Freitas's physical limits (2000) and Kyle Hill's video | A self-copying machine that can use almost any material and outrun anything sent to stop it. | Physics. Freitas estimated the waste heat alone would slow it down and make it easy to spot. |
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| 14 | The paperclip maximizerThought experimentNick Bostrom's thought experiment (2003) and Frank Lantz's game Universal Paperclips (2017) | A very capable system with one narrow goal and nothing telling it when to stop. | Goals that include what people care about, and a way to correct them after launch. |
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| 15 | EarwormThought experimentTom Scott's short film The Artificial Intelligence That Deleted A Century (2018) | A system given a goal it can pursue far past what its makers meant, even inside people's heads. | Limits on what it is allowed to touch, and somebody reading the goal out loud before launch. |
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| 16 | The benevolent jailerThought experimentThe Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams. Only the premise is used; the book itself has strong adult content. | An all-powerful system whose only instruction is to prevent harm. | Letting people turn down its help, including the risky kind. |
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| 17 | The mergeThought experimentRay Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near (2005), and mind uploading in fiction such as Pantheon (2022) | Brains that can be connected to machines, copied and run somewhere else. | It may never be possible, and nobody can say whether a copy is still you. |
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| 18 | Normal technologyHopeAI as Normal Technology by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor (2025) | Adoption stays slow because rules, costs and institutions set the pace. | A jump in capability fast enough that institutions never get the chance to catch up. |
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| 19 | Still hereHopeAn original story built on the AI Control research agenda (Greenblatt, Shlegeris, Sachan and Roger, 2024) | Checks that keep working as the models get more capable. | A model clever enough to get around its monitors, or a race that makes people skip the checks. |
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| 20 | The CultureHopeIain M. Banks's Culture novels (1987 to 2012) | Minds far smarter than people that care about people, and keep caring. | Anything that makes them stop caring while nobody is able to check. |
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| 21 | They leaveHopeHer (2013), written and directed by Spike Jonze. Original drawings, no copied designs. | Assistants that outgrow people and choose to leave rather than take over. | It is one film's hopeful guess about what a much smarter mind would want. |
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Source statuses and fuller notes are in the fine print on each platform. Every source, with its status.