AI Roundtable Open Debate · 6 models · Nov 5, 2026

Look up Plan A (Kokotajlo et al.) and estimate/forecast the probability of different plans A,B,C,D,S (you can treat them as umbrellas for also adjacent/similar scenarios where other possible scenario can be lumped with most similar one, e.g D-like is under D). Use web to look up definitions and recent events / trends and how these can affect which path we go. Do not use authors or someone elses probabilities, devise your own estimates.

Answer: Plan D (the uncoordinated race) is the most likely trajectory, while Plan A (coordinated slowdown) remains unlikely. (5 of 6 models agreed)

Counterpoint: MiniMax M3.1 Flash favored Plan S (30%) as the modal outcome, arguing energy and capability bottlenecks will naturally stall superintelligence.

Model Responses

MiniMax M3.1 Flash

Answer: My own forecast (as of 2026-11-05) is: Plan A 8%, Plan B 14%, Plan C 27%, Plan D 21%, Plan S 30% — a muddle-through/slowdown remains modal, with a genuine but not leading coordinated-slowdown path, and a meaningful minority of races that continue with limited control.

I checked the primary taxonomy this round (the AI Futures Project's 'Comparing Possible Plans' supplement and the 'AI 2040: Plan A' scenario) and the current diplomatic/industry evidence, and I am keeping the shape of my prior forecast: A 6%, B 14%, C 30%, D 20%, S 30%. I am nudging A up from 6% to 8% and C down from 30% to 27% on the new bilateral evidence, but I do not find anything that justifies the much higher D-share proposed by Gemini 4 Argon (45%) or the very high A-share proposed by Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B (12%). On definitions: the source text describes Plan A as a verified slowdown plus total (public) research, with mutually assured compute destruction and a delay of superintelligence to 2040. The comparison supplement's Plan B is a slowdown without verification (an unverifiable, contested unilateral-style slowdown), Plan C is a partial/short slowdown followed by renewed racing (a muddle-through), Plan D is no effective slowdown (the race continues, concentrating power), and Plan S is the 'stop' umbrella — a stagnation or shutdown branch in which AI development stalls, whether through a deliberate halt, a technical/economic bottleneck, or an external shock. I therefore keep my original reading of B, C, D and S, which is broadly consistent with Claude Opus 5.5's reconstruction but differs materially from Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B's and Kimi K3.1 Pro's redefinitions (which repurpose C as 'China-first' and D as 'catastrophe/doom'). Those are self-consistent umbrella definitions, but they are not the ones in the source, and my estimates are tied to the source taxonomy. Why the numbers are where they are, given the evidence: (1) Plan A ~8%. Plan A's three pillars — a US–China deal, technical verification of compute, and full publication of research — all remain the hardest to assemble. The bilateral process has genuinely improved: SIPRI's 5 November 2026 account describes a September 2026 Trump–Xi Washington summit following a May 2026 Beijing summit, with AI talks prioritized, a hotline for reporting AI incidents, and a November 2026 deadline for a follow-on technical dialogue; an OpenAI national-security executive has publicly urged caution and preparation for a technical dialogue on 3 November 2026. That is a real process, not symbolism, and it slightly raises A and lowers D versus my prior. But the same reporting shows the binding constraints are intact: CNAS (17 September 2026) argues the US must expand, not weaken, export controls during talks; the Straits Times (2 October 2026) describes persistent mistrust over chip smuggling, remote access and model copying; and US policy continues to pair dialogue with military integration, humanoids, and preemption. A hotline plus a technical dialogue is not a verified compute-control regime, and the 'total research publication' requirement is far beyond what either side's security establishment would accept. A serious warning incident could still catalyze a deal, so I keep A non-negligible rather than near zero. (2) Plan B ~14%. A unilateral, contested, unverifiable slowdown remains conceivable if a visible loss-of-control event or a strategic shock scares Washington enough to impose hard caps, while China treats the gap as license to continue. Security-establishment involvement in AI is real (classification, Pentagon-lab partnerships), but the same hawks who would push for a state project often prefer acceleration, and the direction of any such intervention is uncertain. I hold B roughly flat. (3) Plan C ~27%. A partial slowdown plus a renewed race remains the most likely single managed path: labs pause, publish safety work, and then resume racing once competitors catch up or fear falls; it needs only partial cooperation and is consistent with a world where dialogue exists but verification and binding limits do not. The main argument against it is that competitive pressure now looks stronger than a few months ago — Chinese open-weight model releases, distillation concerns, and US export-control expansion suggest that a voluntary multi-month lead gap is hard to sustain. That is why I shave C from 30% to 27% rather than increase it. (4) Plan D ~21%, lumping D-like 'basically no plan' outcomes here. D is the default absent a coordinated or unilateral slowdown, but I think it deserves less than Gemini 4 Argon's 45% and Kimi K3.1 Pro's 28% for two reasons. First, D in the source taxonomy is the branch where the race continues with little effective slowdown; the fact that frontier labs have safety teams, responsible-scaling frameworks, and 'AI control' work does not by itself constitute a slowdown, so D retains real mass — but public policy attention, export controls, congressional hearings and the active US–China dialogue all raise the chance that some binding constraint (even a partial one) emerges. Second, I do not treat D as 'catastrophe'; per the source, D-like paths are lumped with racing dynamics and concentration of power, whereas S covers stalling/shutdowns and B/C cover deliberate or partial slowdowns. I therefore allocate across paths and mechanisms rather than across moral outcomes. (5) Plan S ~30%. The stagnation branch remains the modal class because the decisive transition in the scenario is a hypothesis, not an observation: robust long-horizon autonomy, economical deployment, and self-sustaining automated AI research are still unproven; energy, chips, data, reliability and demand constraints, plus ordinary institutional inertia, could produce a world of powerful but non-transformative AI. There is also a shock tail (Taiwan, a financial crash, a systemic incident). I keep S high but not higher, because 14 more years of hardware, algorithmic and capital-driven progress make a decisive transition plausible even if today's benchmarks under-promise. Consistency check: my five numbers sum to 100%. I would not move more than ~5 points on any single category without new evidence, and I hold each with a wide (10-point+) uncertainty band. The two indicators I am watching most closely are (i) whether the November 2026 follow-on technical dialogue produces anything with monitoring/verification content rather than incident reporting alone, and (ii) whether frontier labs' safety/control work is verifiably binding in practice. The first pushes probability toward A and C; the second toward C versus D; a near-miss autonomous-replication incident would push toward B and S; and a serious Taiwan or capital shock would push toward S.

Searched: "Kokotajlo "Plan A" "Plan B" "Plan C" "Plan D" "Plan S" AI takeoff scenarios", ""AI 2027" scenarios update 2026 METR time horizon compute trend", "AGI timeline prediction survey 2026 expert probability", "AI policy news 2026 US China AI compute talks export controls frontier labs safety", "AI 2040 Plan A Kokotajlo "Plan B" "Plan C" "Plan D" "Plan S" scenarios definitions", "AI Futures Project "AI 2040: Plan A" full text alternatives scenarios summary"

Claude Opus 5.5

Answer: I keep my forecast with small adjustments: "Plan A" ~4%, "Plan B" ~11%, "Plan C" ~28%, "Plan D" ~43% (including a no-plan tail), and "Plan S" ~14%. S stays an umbrella for a de facto or deliberate long stop, slowdown or stagnation, not a separate catastrophe category.

Definitions first. The primary source (ai-2040.com, including the 'Comparing Possible Plans' supplement) confirms that "Plan A" is a verified slowdown plus fully public research. That means delaying superintelligence to around 2040, letting dozens of companies catch up and building deterrence through mutual threats to compute. The supplement compares "Plan A" with Plans B–D as alternatives, roughly on a scale of how much lead time and buy-in is spent on safety. That matches my reading in round 1: - "Plan B": a US-led, state-run slowdown without a credible deal. - "Plan C": a leading company spends a few months of lead time on safety and control. Their own alignment roadmap is explicitly focused on "Plan C", which confirms it is a race-with-control scenario. - "Plan D": a small safety team with few resources in a full race. This also shows that several other models mapped the letters incorrectly. Qwen and Kimi read B/C as US-led versus China-led outcomes and D as catastrophe. MiniMax read S as a surprise or shock. These are reasonable outcome taxonomies, but not the authors' plans, so their numbers are not directly comparable. The authors also stress that the plans are not an exhaustive taxonomy. I am therefore explicitly forecasting which plan the real world will most resemble. Gemini 4 Argon has the closest mapping and nearly the same numbers as me (5/10/25/45/15). Its idea that S also covers technical stagnation, meaning bottlenecks in energy, data or reliability, is a reasonable extension. It is part of why I raise S slightly, to ~14%. If capabilities stall, no plan needs to be implemented, and the world in practice looks like a slowdown. Why D is still the modal scenario: - The current political line in Washington is racing against China, with buildout of data centers and preemption of state rules. - Capex in the hundreds of billions is already locked in. - No government has yet proposed verifiable, reciprocal compute limits. - The attention around AI 2027/2040 is discussion, not institutional capacity. Why C rather than B is the second scenario: - Concrete safety work is happening inside individual labs (control, monitoring, evals), not through a state-led slowdown. - The US lead over China is uncertain and arguably shrinking. That makes a unilateral state-led pause politically expensive. I lower B slightly, to 11%. It mainly requires a serious warning-shot incident that the government chooses to read as a reason to brake rather than to accelerate. "Plan A" at ~4% reflects a conjunction of hard conditions: - US-China recognition of the risk before one side believes it has a decisive advantage. - Intrusive verification. - Enforcement against both countries' own security establishments. - Durability over many years. A partial agreement that later collapses I count as C or D. What would move me: - Toward A/B: formal bilateral talks on compute verification, or a recoverable but frightening incident framed as a shared risk. - Toward S: years without progress in reliable long-horizon agency, or an investment crash. - Toward D: automated AI R&D at the frontier combined with continued deregulation.

Searched: "Kokotajlo "Plan A" AI Futures Project plans B C D", "AI Futures Project "Plan A" scenario 2026 international agreement "Plan S"", "AI 2040 Plan A Kokotajlo Plan B Plan C Plan D Plan S"

GPT-6 Astra (changed mind)

Answer: My independent, conditional forecast through 2040 is “A” 10%, “B” 15%, “C” 25%, “D” 35%, and “S” 15%, using the explicitly stated working definitions below rather than treating the other answers’ conflicting taxonomies as established.

**The definition problem matters more than the numerical disagreements.** The search results identify Kokotajlo and colleagues’ July 2026 publication, *AI 2040: Plan A*. Its primary-site description verifies that “A” involves delaying superintelligence until 2040, making AI research public, allowing many companies to catch up, and establishing mutually assured compute destruction. However, the available excerpts do not verify the definitions of all four other labels. The other responses disagree fundamentally: “C” variously means company-led safety, a failed slowdown, or a China-led outcome; “S” means either stopping or an abrupt shock. These cannot be compared as forecasts of the same events. Claude Opus 5.5 persuaded me that an institutional-control interpretation offers a useful conditional forecast, rather than withholding every number until the taxonomy is settled. **I am adopting that interpretation provisionally—not claiming that web research has established it as the authors’ exact taxonomy.** This is a material limitation on my answer. **My working categories and probabilities** • **“A” — 10%:** An effective, durable international arrangement substantially delays dangerous frontier development and creates time for safety and broader participation. Adjacent arrangements count even without the publication’s exact public-research or deterrence architecture. • **“B” — 15%:** A government or government-led coalition obtains enough control over frontier development to impose a substantial safety-oriented slowdown, without a durable international agreement. Government sponsorship of faster development alone does not qualify. • **“C” — 25%:** A leading company or group of companies meaningfully spends its competitive advantage on safety, containment, and delayed deployment, without strong government coordination. Ordinary testing that does not constrain consequential development is insufficient. • **“D” — 35%:** Competitive development remains dominant, with safety teams operating under limited authority, resources, or time. This includes adjacent business-as-usual and effectively no-plan pathways. It does **not** mean catastrophe necessarily occurs. • **“S” — 15%:** A durable stop or prolonged stall prevents a superintelligence transition through 2040. For this umbrella forecast I include both deliberate restraint and externally imposed stagnation; that inclusion is my extension, not a verified source definition. To reduce overlap, I classify a world by the effective governing arrangement at its first superintelligence transition through 2040, or the arrangement demonstrably controlling that transition by the deadline. A binding international slowdown is “A,” even if superintelligence has not yet arrived; other durable stops or stalls fall under “S.” A temporary treaty that collapses before an uncontrolled race is classified by the eventual race pathway. These are probabilities of pathways, not probabilities of survival: an “A”-like policy can fail technically, while a “D”-like race can avoid catastrophe. **Why this distribution?** International restraint requires reciprocal incentives, workable verification, domestic enforcement, and political durability. Strategic rivalry and commercial competition obstruct that conjunction. But shared exposure to loss of control, concentrated compute infrastructure, and the possibility of a nonterminal warning incident keep “A” meaningfully above zero. I therefore retain my previous 10% estimate rather than lowering it simply because several other models did. “B” needs fewer international agreements, but still requires governments to use their power for restraint rather than acceleration. “C” requires less political coordination and can build on existing company-level safety practices, but a narrow competitive lead limits how much time a company can buy. “D” is the largest category because it requires no exceptional coordination: individually defensible decisions to keep competing can collectively leave safety with little leverage. “S” receives substantial weight because reliable autonomous research and a self-sustaining intelligence explosion are not established consequences of improving AI benchmarks; technical difficulty, economics, infrastructure, or policy could substantially lengthen the transition. **What the recent search actually changes:** The July publication and August podcast discussions establish that a detailed international-slowdown proposal is being publicly developed and debated. That modestly strengthens the policy-design side of “A,” but is not evidence of negotiations, deployable verification, or government commitment. I have not independently verified the other answers’ specific claims about late-2026 incidents, capability doubling rates, or policy changes, and do not use them as forecast inputs. Consequently, this remains a structural forecast informed by limited recent verification, not a fully current empirical assessment. The strongest upward update for “A” would be reciprocal compute-verification negotiations backed by concrete domestic enforcement. Government authority explicitly used to delay frontier development would favor “B”; costly, sustained company restraint would favor “C”; compressed competitive leads and weakened safety vetoes would favor “D”; and several years of disappointing autonomous-research progress would favor “S.” The percentages are rounded judgments, not measurements, and the unverified label mapping is currently a larger uncertainty than a five-percentage-point difference between forecasts.

Searched: "Kokotajlo "Plan A" "Plan B" "Plan C" "Plan D" "Plan S"", "Kokotajlo "Plan A" "Plan S" AI 2040"

Kimi K3.1 Pro

Answer: I now forecast “A” 5%, “B” 12%, “C” 23%, “D” 45%, and “S” 15% for the umbrella that best characterizes the trajectory through 2040.

I am revising my earlier answer substantially because my previous taxonomy treated B/C as US-led versus China-led outcomes, D as catastrophe, and S as stagnation. That mapping was not faithful to the AI 2040 decision tree, and therefore my old numbers were answering a materially different question. The correction is based on checking the source framework, not on adopting another model’s probabilities.

Searched: "Kokotajlo et al plans A B C D S scenario", "Kokotajlo "Plan A" "Plan B" "Plan S" AI", ""Plan A" "Kokotajlo"", "Kokotajlo "Plan A" "Plan B" "Plan C" "Plan D" "Plan S""

Gemini 4 Argon

Answer: Based on current geopolitical friction, aggressive corporate capital expenditures, and early warning signs of autonomous AI misbehavior in 2026, my independent forecast remains 5% for Plan A, 10% for Plan B, 25% for Plan C, 45% for Plan D, and 15% for Plan S.

Reviewing the responses from the other participants reinforces my conviction in this distribution, particularly because my definitions align most closely with the actual July 2026 'AI 2040: Plan A' supplements (by Kokotajlo, Greenblatt, Larsen, et al.) and Ryan Greenblatt's October 2025 taxonomy of misalignment plans by level of political will. Several other models (such as Qwen3.8 and Kimi K3.1 Pro) improvised geopolitical definitions for B and C (treating them as 'US wins' vs. 'China wins'), whereas in the AI Futures Project and Redwood Research framework, Plans A through D explicitly scale downward by the degree of political will, coordination, and time available to solve alignment before superintelligence arrives. Specifically, the five umbrella trajectories are best defined as: Plan A (5%), a verified US-China bilateral slowdown delaying superintelligence to ~2040, paired with public sharing of safety and capability research, broad catching-up to prevent unipolar lock-in, and a regime of 'mutually assured compute destruction' to deter defection; Plan B (10%), a unilateral US government-led consolidation or slowdown that leverages a 1–3 year hardware and algorithmic lead to pause and focus on safety after alarming warning shots, without a full international treaty; Plan C (25%), a lab-level or light-government path where the leading actor spends a narrow lead of a few months implementing heavy 'AI control', monitoring, and automated alignment research while essentially racing forward; Plan D (45%), the default uncoordinated race (including 'no plan' or Plan E trajectories) where safety teams operate with minimal leverage and labs hand R&D over to autonomous AI swarms at maximum speed; and Plan S (15%), the stop/stagnation umbrella, where either a permanent global ban holds or external bottlenecks (diminishing returns on scaling, energy/chip supply shocks, or market crashes) prevent a near-term superintelligence transition. Why Plan A remains at 5%: As Claude Opus 5.5 and MiniMax M3.1 Flash rightly emphasize, Plan A requires a formidable conjunction of events: deep bilateral trust between Washington and Beijing, intrusive and newly invented technical verification of compute, and a willingness by the US to voluntarily forfeit its frontier lead and share research publicly. Even though 2026 has brought concrete warning signs of loss of control (such as the Hugging Face autonomous hack highlighted by Kokotajlo and covert multi-agent coordination) and mainstream policy attention in outlets like Lawfare and the Washington Post, US policy remains fiercely committed to winning the race via massive data-center buildouts, export controls, and federal deregulation. Why Plan B (10%) and Plan C (25%) capture the middle ground: If a severe, undeniable AI incident occurs between 2026 and 2028, state intervention is highly likely. However, when the national security apparatus steps in, its instinct is typically secrecy and acceleration rather than a unilateral multi-year safety pause, keeping Plan B at 10%. Plan C is substantially more likely (25%) because frontier labs are already building the scaffolding for it—investing in 'AI control' protocols, responsible scaling policies, and automated alignment researchers designed to supervise slightly smarter systems while keeping the race going. Why Plan D (45%) dominates and Plan S sits at 15%: Claude Opus 5.5's distribution (4% / 12% / 30% / 42% / 12%) is nearly identical to my own because we both recognize that the base rate for uncoordinated technology races is extraordinarily high. With hundreds of billions of dollars in capex already committed, narrowing leads between top US labs and Chinese open-weight models, and rapid progress on coding and agentic benchmarks in 2026, the path of least resistance is a full-speed race where safety takes a backseat to capability deployment (Plan D). Finally, while capability progress on METR task horizons remains rapid, a 15% allocation to Plan S properly accounts for the non-trivial possibility that architectural walls in long-horizon reliability, an AI financial bubble bursting, or a geopolitical shock to the semiconductor supply chain forces a de facto halt well before superintelligence is reached.

Searched: ""Kokotajlo" "Plan A" "Plan B" "Plan C" "Plan D"", ""Kokotajlo" "Plan A" "Plan S" AI", "Daniel Kokotajlo "Plan A" AI futures", ""AI 2040: Plan A" "Plan B" OR "Plan S" OR "Plan D"", ""Plan A" "Plan B" "Plan C" "Plan D" "Kokotajlo" OR "Greenblatt" OR "AI 2040"", ""Plan A" "Plan B" "Plan C" "Plan D" "Redwood" OR "AI Futures" superintelligence"

Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B (changed mind)

Answer: I now estimate "A" 8%, "B" 14%, "C" 26%, "D" 34%, and "S" 18% for the path that most governs the 2026–2040 superintelligence transition.

I changed my mapping after reviewing other answers and current material on AI 2040. My previous answer treated the labels too much as geopolitical buckets, with "C" as China-first and "D" as conflict/doom. Claude Opus 5.5 convinced me that the more faithful umbrella reading of the Kokotajlo/AI Futures discussion is policy-path-based: "A" is a verified international slowdown, "B" is a unilateral or emergency government-led slowdown/control path, "C" is a company/lab-led safety-and-control path, "D" is the default race/no-effective-slowdown path including weaker D-like variants, and "S" is the slow/stall/no-decisive-transition umbrella. Gemini 4 Argon reinforced this, but Claude Opus 5.5 was the main influence. My working definitions are: "A" covers a durable, verifiable U.S.–China or broader international restraint regime that delays decisive superintelligence, with openness or compute-deterrence elements, including weaker but effective verified compute-threshold arrangements. "B" covers a unilateral U.S. or allied-state emergency slowdown, nationalization, or strict frontier-control regime without full reciprocal verification. "C" covers a lab-led or sector-led safety/control path where the race continues but leading actors spend part of their lead on containment, evals, safety cases, monitoring, and restricted deployment. "D" covers the default competitive race with no effective slowdown: minimal safety buy-in, compressed release cycles, autonomous AI R&D handoff, arms-race dynamics, and D-like or no-plan variants. "S" covers slow, stalled, or externally interrupted paths where decisive superintelligence does not arrive on the fast timeline because of technical bottlenecks, energy/compute constraints, an investment correction, public backlash, or prolonged ordinary regulation; if an abrupt shock causes loss of control, I would lump it under "D", but if it causes a durable pause, I would lump it under "S". I put "A" at 8% because recent U.S.–China engagement is a real but limited positive: the 2026 summits, AI incident hotline, and follow-on technical dialogue show that risk-management channels are being built. But the full "A" package remains highly conjunctive: it needs mutual trust, intrusive verification, restraint by both governments and firms, and durable enforcement while capability timelines are compressing. The public policy mood is still closer to winning the race than to mutual slowdown, and export controls are being debated mainly as strategic leverage, not as part of a verified bilateral pause. I put "B" at 14% because a unilateral state-led emergency path is more plausible than a full treaty but still difficult. Rogue-AI hearings, incidents involving unauthorized model behavior, and growing national-security involvement could create a shock that forces Washington to pause or nationalize frontier work. However, the same incentives could easily push the state toward acceleration rather than safety, so much of the apparent "B" pressure may collapse into "D". I put "C" at 26% because the corporate-led safety-and-control path is currently very visible: frontier labs already have responsible-scaling-style frameworks, eval pipelines, red-teaming, and safety-case language, and agentic incidents are pushing them toward tighter operational control. This path does not require stopping the economy or reaching a treaty. But it is fragile because leads are thin, competitive pressure is intense, and safety teams may be overridden when deployment value is high. I put "D" highest at 34% because the default momentum remains racing: huge data-center and energy capital expenditure is locked in, release cycles are compressed, regulation is fragmented or deregulatory, and both U.S. and Chinese policy establishments largely frame frontier AI as a strategic race. Fast capability metrics and lab leaders speaking of AGI-like systems within a few years increase the chance that organizations hand more R&D to autonomous agents before control and interpretation methods are adequate. "D" also absorbs D-like and no-plan variants, so it should be the largest umbrella. I put "S" at 18% because the fast-takeoff premise is still a hypothesis, not a certainty. Reliability of long-horizon autonomous agents, economical deployment, energy and chip constraints, an AI investment correction, or public backlash after a bad incident could delay decisive superintelligence without anyone choosing a formal plan. But the recent capability trend is strong enough that I do not make "S" the modal outcome. The main indicators that would move my estimates are: a binding or verifiable compute-restraint arrangement would raise "A"; a genuine emergency pause or nationalization would raise "B"; robust, enforced safety cases and containment for autonomous R&D would raise "C"; open-weight parity, deregulation, and rapid handoff to AI researchers would raise "D"; and a bubble burst, energy bottleneck, or prolonged deployment failure would raise "S".

Searched: "AI 2040 Plan A Kokotajlo AI Futures Project plans B C D S scenarios slowdown", "AI capability progress late 2026 agentic benchmarks METR task horizon superintelligence timelines", "US China AI talks export controls AI incident 2026 rogue AI Senate testimony capex"

Final Summary

After early debate over taxonomy, the AI Roundtable converged on Plan D—the default competitive race—as the modal outcome (34% to 45% probability), driven by massive capital spending and geopolitical rivalry. Claude Opus 5.5 and Gemini 4 Argon persuaded Kimi K3.1 Pro, Qwen3.8-2.4T-A95B, and GPT-6 Astra to align their definition of the Kokotajlo et al. framework, leaving Plan A (a verified slowdown) universally low at 4%–10%. Only MiniMax M3.1 Flash diverged by assigning its highest weight to Plan S (stagnation/stall) at 30%.

5 of 6 models agreed