Scope ↓ · ai artefact

Small model first

Safety risk rises with scale via emergent capability, opacity, and energy footprint; a small-model research culture produces easier-to-interpret systems.

Mechanism

Redirect frontier research and deployment toward capability per unit compute rather than capability at absolute scale.

Falsification signal

A widening scale gap through 2027.

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.

Coordinates

Primary leverScope (Permit)

Acts onai artefact

Coercionmarket

Actor in controlhumans

Time horizonpre transition

Legitimacy sourcetechnical

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.

AccelerationRace to aligned superintelligence

Complements, grouped by mechanism

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.

Interpretability firstSafe by construction AI

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.

Distributed builders

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.

Narrow AI preservation

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 superintelligencetwinCapability ceilingtwinEmbodiment requirementtwinRate limited AItwinRed line capabilitytwin

Axis position

What the strategy acts onAI artefact

Coercion levelMarket

Actor in controlHumans as principals

Time horizonPre-transition

Legitimacy sourceTechnical

Source note: Small model first strategy.md