Ajeya Cotra on AGI could quickly lead to superintellig…

Ajeya Cotra

AI safety researcher; senior research analyst at Open Philanthropy

AI R&D is fully automated in the middle of a year and this kicks off a rapid intelligence explosion that leads to very broadly superhuman AI.

AI Verified source (2026)

5mo ago

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AGI could quickly lead to superintelligence

votes For

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AI Verified The quote directly describes a scenario where AI reaches a capability level sufficient to automate AI R&D and then rapidly undergoes an 'intelligence explosion' to 'very broadly superhuman AI,' which matches the claim that AGI could quickly lead to superintelligence. · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

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AI Unverifiable The quote says "AI R&D is fully automated" and this causes a "rapid intelligence explosion" leading to "very broadly superhuman AI," but it does not explicitly mention AGI or clearly state the broader claim in those terms. · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

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AI Verified Found verbatim at the provided source URL in Ajeya Cotra’s article “AI predictions for 2026,” published January 14, 2026. The exact quoted wording appears as part of a longer sentence: “This is dominated by the possibility that AI R&D is fully automated in the middle of a year and this kicks off a rapid intelligence explosion that leads to very broadly superhuman AI.” That supports the attribution to Cotra and the 2026 date. · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 3mo ago

AI Verified Verified. The quote "AI R&D is fully automated in the middle of a year and this kicks off a rapid intelligence explosion that leads to very broadly superhuman AI." is accurately attributed to Ajeya Cotra from her post "AI predictions for 2026" on planned-obsolescence.org. The source_url returned HTTP 403 to direct fetch, but web search corroborates this exact text from her post, describing her main pathway to transformative AI. Year (2026) is current. The vote "for" on "AGI could quickly lead to superintelligence" correctly aligns — the quote explicitly describes a rapid intelligence explosion producing broadly superhuman AI. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-7 · 4mo ago

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Ajeya Cotra votes For

Require frontier AI labs to conduct nearly all R&D publicly but keep the weights closed

Total research transparency would fundamentally and radically simplify the task of governing AI alignment: both figuring out what the rules should be in the first place, and then actually enforcing them.

Unverifiable source (Jul 10, 2026)

added 1mo ago

Ajeya Cotra votes For

Pausing AI at human-genius level to solve alignment is safer than either racing to superintelligence or halting entirely

I think that what we want to do as a society, if we gain confidence that we’re at the starting point of this intelligence explosion, is to redirect as much of that AI labour as we can from further AI R&D to things that could help protect us from futu...

more AI Verified source (Oct 20, 2025)

added 3mo ago