Scope ↓ · ai artefact

Capability ceiling

Some capability level captures most economic value while avoiding most risk, is identifiable before crossing, and can be verifiably enforced.

Mechanism

Cap maximum capability of deployed systems via training flops thresholds enforced through compute governance and deployment tests.

If it succeeds: what binds next

The ceiling holds. Adversaries with incentive to breach it remain; the ceiling's defence becomes a permanent enforcement posture rather than a solved problem.

A strategy that produces a worse next problem than the one it solved has not done durable work.

Historical analogue

Climate · Emissions caps

Every strategy inherits a plausible ceiling from its precedent. The analogue conditions the realistic reach.

Produced

Emissions reductions in some jurisdictions; technology shifts.

Did not produce

Global-scale reductions at required pace have not happened.

Coordinates

Primary leverScope (Permit)

Acts onai artefact

Coercionstate coercion

Actor in controlhumans

Time horizonpre transition

Legitimacy sourcestate

Conflicts, grouped by mechanism

Frame opposition

incompatible premises

The strategies accept different premises about what AI is or what the binding problem is. They conflict not on lever choice but on the frame that makes lever choice sensible.

Race to aligned superintelligenceAcceleration

Complements, grouped by mechanism

Same-lever reinforce

same lever, same pull, different mechanism

Both strategies pull the same lever in the same direction by different means. They stack: doing both amplifies the pull, at the cost of double-counting in portfolio audits.

Red line capabilityNarrow AI preservation

Same phase, different layer

same stage, distinct levers

Both are active in the same phase of the transition but act on different layers (model vs institution vs culture). They cover different failure modes inside the same window.

Compute governance

Cross-side bridge

one AI-side, one world-side

One acts on the model, the other on institutions or culture. The bridge hedges against both artefact-level and substrate-level failure.

Governance first

Same-lever twins

Both use the same lever in the same direction. Usually redundant inside a portfolio: each dollar or effort unit only buys one lever pull, even if two strategies are named.

Abandon superintelligencetwinEmbodiment requirementtwinRate limited AItwinSmall model firsttwin

Axis position

What the strategy acts onAI artefact

Coercion levelState coercion

Actor in controlHumans as principals

Time horizonPre-transition

Legitimacy sourceState

Source note: Capability ceiling as strategy.md