AGI Strategies
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Concentration ↓ · institutional

Distributed builders

No single failure mode wins if capability is distributed across many independent actors, and concentration risk exceeds diffusion risk.

Mechanism

Keep many independent actors training and deploying, using competitive pressure and open ecosystems to block single-actor dominance.

If it succeeds: what binds next

Capability is distributed across many actors. The binding problem becomes the worst-case actor and whether any single misuse is catastrophic enough to dominate the diffusion bet.

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

Self-undermining threshold

overshoot risk

When weights proliferate to actors who will not self-restrain.

The benefit (no single actor dominates) is achieved at the cost of creating many actors who each can misuse.

Every strategy has a stable region where it reinforces itself and an unstable region where pursuit defeats it. The threshold between them is usually narrower than advocates acknowledge.

Addresses 1 failure scenario

all scenarios →
Single actor decisive advantage

People on the record

4

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

  • Ben Goertzel

    Ben Goertzel

    Deep ML / safety technical · Known across the AI/safety field

  • Andy Jassy

    Andy Jassy

    Amazon CEO; AWS architect

  • Daniel Gross

    Daniel Gross

    Andromeda Cluster co-founder; ex-Apple AI lead

  • Jim Keller

    Jim Keller

    CEO of Tenstorrent; legendary chip architect

Coordinates

Primary leverConcentration (Distribute)
Acts oninstitutional
Coercionmarket
Actor in controlhumans
Time horizonhorizon neutral
Legitimacy sourcemarket

Conflicts, grouped by mechanism

4

Lever opposition

same lever, opposite pull

The pair's primary lever is the same; they pull it in opposite directions. A portfolio containing both is internally incoherent on that lever.

Centralised AI projectPublic AI

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.

Closed weights mandateRegulated utility

Complements, grouped by mechanism

4

Same-side diversification

same side, different lever

Both act on the same side (AI or world) but pull distinct levers. They cover several failure modes on that side while leaving the other side uncovered.

Open source maximalismMutual dependency

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.

Antitrust primacy

Adjacent bet

different levers, loosely coupled

Different levers, different directions of action. They reinforce only via the general principle that covering more bets dominates covering fewer.

Liability driven safety

Same-lever twins

3

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.

Coup prevention firsttwinMultipolaritytwinSovereign wealthtwin

Axis position

What the strategy acts onInstitutional
Coercion levelMarket
Actor in controlHumans as principals
Time horizonHorizon-neutral
Legitimacy sourceMarket

Source note: Distributed builders strategy.md