Chapter 01: Extropians
mid-1990s – 2000 — When transhumanism met mailing-list accelerationism
About this timeline
Follow each prediction from its original source through its deadline and resolution. Every prediction and chapter has a permanent, shareable page with citations.
Source audit
The Four Main Claims
Neural networks are not enough; nothing visible happens before FOOM; AGI reaches FOOM in hours; and modest compute can be sufficient. See the latest dated statement located that still supports each thesis, followed by later qualifications and the evidence.
New source audit
No Warning Signs
Yudkowsky’s 2021–23 account predicts apparent alignment on weaker systems, concealed failure as capabilities rise, and a terminal first failure—not repeated warning shots that civilization can correct.
Chapters
Chapter 02: SL4 / Plan to Singularity
1999–2000 — Shock Level Four and open-source seed AI
Chapter 03: Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
2000–~2012 — From 'we will build Friendly AI' to early catastrophic risk warnings
Chapter 04: Overcoming Bias / LessWrong / Rationality community
2006–2012 — Debugging humanity, one very long blog post at a time
Chapter 05: MIRI: Research
2013–2021 — those who can't build, align
Chapter 06: MIRI: Advocacy
2022–2025 — those who can't align, sabotage
Chapter 07: When Prophecy Fails
2026 – present — the prophecy recedes; the apparatus grows
All predictions
Singularity by 2025 (or 2005, given funding!)
1996 → 2001; walked back.
“It's expected in 2035. (Oops, make that 2025.)”
Seed AI by 2010, to outrace nanotech
1999 → 2010; falsified by events.
“To have a good chance of outracing nanotech, we should plan to develop a seed AI by 2010.”
Nanotech ~2010; the Singularity ~2020
1999 → 2020; falsified by events.
“The 50% point [for nanotech] may be 2010, or earlier. … AI at 2020 CRNS.”
Neural nets: “certainly Not Sufficient”
2000 → 2023; falsified by events.
“Regardless of whether neural networks are Necessary, they are certainly Not Sufficient.”
Hard takeoff in a basement within ten years
2001 → 2011; falsified by events.
“…a hard takeoff occurs in SIAI's or Webmind's basement sometime in the next ten years or so.”
“Three hours to transhumanity”
2001 → 2008; walked back.
“…the ‘hard takeoff’ ‘seed AI’ three-hours-to-transhumanity scenario.”
Time to Singularity: “2005–2020, peak 2008–2010”
2001 → 2020; falsified by events.
“2005-2020 / peak at 2008-2010”
SIAI ships transhuman AI ~2008–2010
2001 → 2010; falsified by events.
“…reaching transhumanity sometime between 2005 and 2020, probably around 2008 or 2010.”
“Dead certain”: days to nanotech
2002 → 2023; falsified by events.
“I would call it dead certain in favor of a hard takeoff… all economic, computational… indicators point straight toward it.”
“A planet-sized neural network would fail”
2006 → 2023; falsified by events.
“But a neural network the size of a planet, given the same examples, would have failed in the same way.”
AGI = ten insights, a small team, one desktop
2008 → 2023; falsified by events.
“Intelligence is about architecture… architecture is mostly about deep insights.”
Doom by 2030, at 2:1 odds
2017 → 2030; still open.
“If humanity survives to 00:00 GMT, Jan 1 2030, Yudkowsky pays Caplan $200; a bet at 2:1 odds in favour of doom.”
No GDP boom before doom
“My mainline view is that growth stays at 5%/year and then everybody falls over dead in 3 seconds and the world gets transformed into paperclips”
2021 → 2025; falsified by events.
AI takes IMO gold by 2025 (≥16%)
2022 → 2025; came true.
“I'll stand by a >16% probability of the technical capability existing by end of 2025.”
“Dying with dignity”: certain doom, no date
2022 → open; still open.
“…doubling our chances of survival will only take them from 0% to 0%.”
Self-driving cars: approved only after the world ends
2021 → 2025; falsified by events.
“…the World-Ending Company will be able to use the same tech to build a true self-driving car, which would in the natural course of things be approved for sale a few years later after the world had ended.”
The trillion-scale AI boom: 'pretty darn prohibited'
2021 → 2025; falsified by events.
“this all sure does sound "pretty darn prohibited" on my model, but I'd hope there'd be something earlier than that we could bet on.”
Deepnets as ubiquitous as computers, maybe by 2035
2021 → 2025; falsified by events.
“if the world lasts until 2035, I could perhaps see deepnets becoming as ubiquitous as computers were in… 1995? 2005? would that fulfill the terms of the Prophecy?”
Codex: stagnation for 5 years or a massive leap in 2
2021 → 2023; hedged: couldn't lose.
“I feel like I would indeed not have the right to feel very surprised if Codex technology stagnated for the next 5 years, nor if it took a massive leap in 2 years and got ubiquitously adopted by lots of programmers.”
$1B/yr waifutech before AI freedom-of-the-road
2021 → open; still open.
“I think my sheer impression would be that we'll get $1B/yr waifutech before we get AI freedom-of-the-road”