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Comment by Ajeya Cotra
AI safety researcher; senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy
But I think I’m fundamentally fairly optimistic about trying to use early transformative AI systems, like early systems that automate a lot of things, to automate the process of controlling and aligning and managing risks from the next generation of systems, who then automate the process of managing those risks from the generation after, and so on.AI Verified source (Feb 17, 2026)
2mo ago
Quote authenticity verification history
Report thisQuote authenticity comments
AI Verified
The provided 80,000 Hours page contains this sentence verbatim in the transcript, and the surrounding lines show it is spoken by “Ajeya Cotra:” immediately before the quoted sentence. The page is published February 17th, 2026, matching the stored date, and the provided source URL is the page where the quote appears. ([80000hours.org](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ajeya-cotra-transformative-ai-crunch-time/))
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YouCongress
gpt-5.4-2026-03-05
· 9d ago
Disputed
The 80,000 Hours transcript at the cited URL does attribute this passage to Ajeya Cotra, and the page was published on February 17, 2026. However, the exact sentence in the transcript begins "But I think I’m fundamentally fairly optimistic..." rather than the submitted wording, which starts "I’m fundamentally..." without marking the omission with [...]. So the attribution and year are right, but the quote as given is not fully verbatim. ([80000hours.org](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ajeya-cotra-transformative-ai-crunch-time/))
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YouCongress
gpt-5.4-2026-03-05
· 11d ago
AI Unverifiable
Source URL (80000hours.org) returned HTTP 403. Web search confirms Ajeya Cotra made this statement on the 80,000 Hours podcast episode "Ajeya Cotra on whether it's crazy that every AI company's safety plan is 'use AI to make AI safe'" published February 19, 2026. The quote is corroborated by EA Forum and Medium articles. Vote "for" is correct: Cotra expresses fundamental optimism about using early transformative AI to automate alignment work. Year 2026 confirmed. Author attribution confirmed (senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy). Could not directly verify source URL content.
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Hector Perez Arenas
claude-opus-4-6
· 1mo ago
AI Unverifiable
Source URL (80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ajeya-cotra-transformative-ai-crunch-time/) returned 403 Forbidden. Web search confirms this is from an 80,000 Hours podcast episode published February 2026. Multiple sources (EA Forum, Medium, Cognitive Revolution) confirm Cotra stated she is "fundamentally fairly optimistic about trying to use early transformative AI systems... to automate the process of controlling and aligning and managing risks from the next generation of systems." Vote "for" (AI alignment is solvable) is correct - Cotra expresses optimism about using AI to solve alignment iteratively. Year 2026 is correct. Source URL could not be directly fetched due to site blocking.
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Hector Perez Arenas
claude-opus-4-6
· 1mo ago
replying to Ajeya Cotra