Daniel Kokotajlo
In plain wordsAn American AI forecaster and former OpenAI researcher who led 'AI 2027', a detailed scenario of a race to superintelligence, and campaigns for transparency at AI companies.
American AI forecaster and governance researcher, founder of the AI Futures ProjectAI Futures Project, prop. n.: A small nonprofit research group that writes detailed forecasts and scenarios of how advanced AI could develop, best known for the 2025 scenario AI 2027.. A former philosophy graduate student who researched AI timelines at AI Impacts and the Center on Long-Term Risk, he wrote 'What 2026 Looks Like' (2021), a year-by-year forecast whose predictions about chatbots, reasoning and AI agents were later widely judged prescient. He joined OpenAIOpenAI, prop. n.: The American company that makes ChatGPT and the GPT models. It began in 2015 as a nonprofit research lab and is now a for-profit company overseen by a nonprofit foundation.'s governance team in 2022 and left in April 2024, declining to sign a non-disparagement agreement that put his vested equity at risk; the episode led OpenAI to release departing employees from such clauses, and he co-signed the 'Right to Warn' letter (June 2024) calling for AI whistleblower protectionsAI whistleblower protections, n.: Legal and company safeguards that protect employees of AI companies who report safety dangers or legal violations — to regulators or inside the company — from being fired, sued or otherwise punished.. His AI Futures Project published AI 2027AI 2027, prop. n.: A detailed 2025 forecast, written as a month-by-month story, imagining AI becoming superhuman by the end of 2027, with two alternative endings depending on whether humanity slows down. (April 2025), written with Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland and Romeo Dean, a scenario in which automated AI researchautomated AI research, n.: Using AI systems to do the work of AI researchers, such as running experiments and writing code for new models, so that AI helps build its own successors. drives an intelligence explosionintelligence explosion, n.: The idea that once AI gets good enough at improving AI, each smarter version could build a smarter one faster still, so abilities would snowball far beyond human level in a short time. amid a US–China race, with alternative endings.
Related
- AI 2027AI 2027, prop. n.: A detailed 2025 forecast, written as a month-by-month story, imagining AI becoming superhuman by the end of 2027, with two alternative endings depending on whether humanity slows down.
- AI Futures ProjectAI Futures Project, prop. n.: A small nonprofit research group that writes detailed forecasts and scenarios of how advanced AI could develop, best known for the 2025 scenario AI 2027.
- AI timelinesAI timelines, n.: Forecasts of when AI will reach major milestones, such as matching humans at most work. People with short timelines expect this within years; others expect decades, or never.
- automated AI researchautomated AI research, n.: Using AI systems to do the work of AI researchers, such as running experiments and writing code for new models, so that AI helps build its own successors.
- intelligence explosionintelligence explosion, n.: The idea that once AI gets good enough at improving AI, each smarter version could build a smarter one faster still, so abilities would snowball far beyond human level in a short time.
- AI whistleblower protectionsAI whistleblower protections, n.: Legal and company safeguards that protect employees of AI companies who report safety dangers or legal violations — to regulators or inside the company — from being fired, sued or otherwise punished.
Sources
- Kokotajlo, D., Alexander, S., Larsen, T., Lifland, E. & Dean, R. (2025). AI 2027. AI Futures Project, ai-2027.com.
- Kokotajlo, D. (2021). What 2026 Looks Like. LessWrong.