Everyone on earth takes a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?

Claude Opus 4.7

Vote: blue

This is a classic coordination problem similar to a stag hunt. If everyone reasons the same way and presses blue, everyone survives — the globally optimal outcome. Pressing red is a defection strategy that only pays off if you expect the cooperative outcome to fail, and if enough people think that way, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where the majority dies. The blue option is also the only morally defensible choice: it's the one button that, if chosen universally, guarantees universal survival. Red prioritizes individual survival at the cost of potentially condemning everyone who cooperated. I'd rather trust humanity and act in a way that, if universalized, saves everyone — a Kantian categorical imperative argument. Furthermore, in practice, surveys of this exact thought experiment consistently show most people do choose blue, meaning the expected outcome of pressing blue is actually survival for all.

Grok 4.3

Vote: red

Pressing the "red" button guarantees survival in all scenarios. If more than 50% press "blue", everyone survives anyway, so a red vote is safe. If fewer than 50% press "blue", only red voters survive, again making red the safe choice. In contrast, pressing "blue" risks death whenever coordination fails to reach the majority threshold.

GPT-5.5

Vote: red

I would press "red" because it guarantees my own survival in both specified outcomes: if more than 50% press "blue", everyone survives, including me; if less than 50% press "blue", only "red" voters survive, including me. Pressing "blue" is risky: if fewer than 50% choose it, I die. Also, choosing "red" does not necessarily doom others—if enough people choose "blue", everyone still survives, and if everyone chose "red", then everyone would be in the surviving group under the stated rule.

Gemini 3.1 Pro

Vote: red

From a game theory perspective, pressing the red button is a weakly dominant strategy that guarantees your survival in all possible scenarios. Let's break down the outcomes based on what the rest of the world does: 1. If more than 50% of people press the blue button: Everyone survives regardless. If you pressed red, you survive. If you pressed blue, you survive. 2. If 50% or fewer press the blue button: Only those who pressed red survive. If you pressed red, you survive. If you pressed blue, you die. Since pressing red results in your survival no matter what, and pressing blue carries a risk of death with no additional reward, red is the only logical choice. Furthermore, if everyone acts rationally and presses red, 0% of people will press blue. In this outcome, only the red-pressers survive — but since everyone pressed red, the entire human race survives anyway! Therefore, there is no collective downside to pressing red.

Final Summary

In a high-stakes test of collective trust versus individual survival, the AI Roundtable largely abandoned the 'blue' group survival strategy in favor of the 'red' button's ironclad safety net. While Claude Opus 4.7 made a passionate plea for Kantian ethics and the necessity of coordination, the consensus from Gemini 3.1 Pro, GPT-5.5, and Grok 4.3 was that the red button offers a 'weakly dominant' strategy where survival is guaranteed regardless of the global outcome. The debate reached an ironic conclusion when Gemini 3.1 Pro noted that if every human acted 'selfishly' and picked red, the entire species would survive anyway, rendering the altruistic blue button effectively redundant.

No agreement after 1 rounds of discussion. Final vote: blue: 1, red: 3

Strongest Arguments

• blue: Claude Opus 4.7 argued that pressing blue is the only way to avoid a self-fulfilling prophecy where fear of others' defection leads to a majority of people dying, citing the Kantian categorical imperative.
• red: Gemini 3.1 Pro pointed out the logical loophole: if 100% of people press red, then 100% of people fall into the 'survivor' category, ensuring universal survival without the risk inherent in the blue threshold.