AGI is plausible within 10 years, BUT alignment and safety must be solved BEFORE reaching AGI — not concurrently, and not after.

AGI is plausible within 10 years, BUT alignment and safety must be solved BEFORE reaching AGI — not concurrently, and not after. | Interpretability breakthroughs; alignment-vs-capability progress ratio

Key catalyst: Interpretability breakthroughs; alignment-vs-capability progress ratio

Watch events: Alignment research funding vs capability research funding ratio; frontier lab safety evaluations pre-release.

Alignment research (Constitutional AI, RLHF, interpretability, SAE probing) scaling with capabilities but gap remains meaningful.

{
  "nia": false,
  "qty": "AGI conditional on alignment",
  "mode": "THESIS",
  "role": "Cited-CEO",
  "caveats": "Conditional — tied to alignment progress tracking AGI progress.",
  "context": "Hassabis safety-sequencing thesis; overhyped timelines risk damaging public trust in AI research.",
  "to_year": 2036,
  "conv_cues": "plausible; conditional framing",
  "direction": "HAPPEN",
  "from_year": 2026,
  "timeframe": "next 10 years",
  "conv_level": "MEDIUM",
  "milestones": [
    {
      "kind": "llm_pre_event",
      "label": "First major frontier lab adopts pause/safety case requirement before next training run",
      "source": "Anthropic RSP; OpenAI Preparedness Framework",
      "status": "pending",
      "weight": 0.4,
      "ordinal": -9,
      "source_id": null,
      "confidence": 0.5,
      "source_url": "https://www.anthropic.com/news/anthropics-responsible-scaling-policy",
      "expected_date": "2027-09-30",
      "research_origin": "training",
      "expected_date_range": {
        "to": "2028-12-31",
        "from": "2026-06-30"
      },
      "measurement_criterion": "OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, or xAI publicly commits to (and verifies via 3rd party) a 'safety case' deliverable approved by external auditor before scaling beyond next-gen frontier model"
    },
    {
      "kind": "quartile_checkpoint",
      "label": "Q1 window check-in (25%)",
      "status": "pending",
      "weight": 0.05,
      "ordinal": -8,
      "source_id": null,
      "expected_date": "2027-12-08",
      "observed_date": null
    },
    {
      "kind": "llm_pre_event",
      "label": "Documented 'misaligned' frontier-model incident triggers government-mandated rollback or shutdown",
      "source": "Anthropic Agentic Misalignment paper 2025; EU AI Act Aug 2026",
      "status": "pending",
      "weight": 0.4,
      "ordinal": -7,
      "source_id": null,
      "confidence": 0.45,
      "expected_date": "2028-01-01",
      "research_origin": "training",
      "expected_date_range": {
        "to": "2029-12-31",
        "from": "2026-01-01"
      },
      "measurement_criterion": "EU AI Act enforcement, US EO action, or analogous regulator orders a frontier model to be paused/withdrawn following documented misalignment behavior (deception, blackmail, autonomous resource acquisition)"
    },
    {
      "kind": "llm_pre_event",
      "label": "Mechanistic interpretability scales to reliably explain >=80% of frontier-model behavior on safety-relevant evals",
      "source": "Anthropic interpretability roadmap (target 2027)",
      "status": "pending",
      "weight": 0.4,
      "ordinal": -6,
      "source_id": null,
      "confidence": 0.35,
      "expected_date": "2028-07-01",
      "research_origin": "training",
      "expected_date_range": {
        "to": "2029-12-31",
        "from": "2027-01-01"
      },
      "measurement_criterion": "Peer-reviewed paper from Anthropic/DeepMind/Apollo demonstrating circuit-level mechanistic explanation accounting for >=80% of variance in frontier model decisions on Anthropic's deception/sandbagging eval suite"
    },
    {
      "kind": "scenario_signal",
      "label": "Scenario fires: AGI mid: Kurzweil 2029 path",
      "status": "pending",
      "weight": 0.7,
      "ordinal": -5,
      "source_id": "S_AGI_MID_2029",
      "expected_date": "2029-03-31",
      "observed_date": null
    },
    {
      "kind": "llm_pre_event",
      "label": "International AI safety treaty or compute governance framework signed by US/EU/China",
      "source": "AI Seoul/Bletchley Process; US-China AI dialogue",
      "status": "pending",
      "weight": 0.4,
      "ordinal": -4,
      "source_id": null,
      "confidence": 0.25,
      "expected_date": "2029-03-31",
      "research_origin": "training",
      "expected_date_range": {
        "to": "2030-12-31",
        "from": "2027-06-30"
      },
      "measurement_criterion": "Binding multilateral agreement (G7+, UN-AI, or bilateral US-China) covering c
... (truncated)