AGI Strategies
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Scope • · ai artefact

Differential technology development

Offense-defense balance is adjustable; defensive and verification applications can compound faster than offensive ones if deliberately funded.

Mechanism

Accelerate AI applications that strengthen defense, verification, and coordination; slow those that strengthen offense, persuasion, and centralisation.

If it succeeds: what binds next

Defence compounds faster than offence. Defensive capability accumulates in whoever funded it, producing a new concentration asymmetric to the original.

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

Falsification signal

The offense-defense classification cannot be operationalised in any funded program within five years.

A strategy held without a falsification signal is not strategy; it is affiliation. Continued support after this signal lands is identity, not bet. See the identity diagnostic.

Addresses 1 failure scenario

all scenarios →
AI-enabled large-scale physical harm

People on the record

5

Profiled figures appear first, with their tier in small caps. Each face links to the person and their full quote record. Tag: differential-tech.

  • Vitalik Buterin

    Vitalik Buterin

    Deep ML / safety technical · Mass-public recognition

  • David Rolnick

    McGill / Mila; Climate Change AI co-founder

  • Ilan Gur

    ARIA UK CEO; ex-ARPA-E

  • Owen Cotton-Barratt

    FHI alumnus; existential risk researcher

  • Sara Beery

    Sara Beery

    MIT EAPS / CSAIL; AI for ecology

Coordinates

Primary leverScope (neutral)
Acts onai artefact
Coercionconsent
Actor in controlhumans
Time horizonpre transition
Legitimacy sourcetechnical

Conflicts, grouped by mechanism

0

No strict conflicts catalogued. This strategy pulls a lever that nothing else pulls in the opposite direction.

Complements, grouped by mechanism

4

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.

Resilience firstGovernance first

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.

Coordination infrastructureAlignment first

Axis position

What the strategy acts onAI artefact
Coercion levelConsent
Actor in controlHumans as principals
Time horizonPre-transition
Legitimacy sourceTechnical

Source note: Differential technology development strategy.md