Eli Lifland reasons through whether pausing training without pausing experiments helps AI safety

eli_lifland · x · 2026-09-30

AI forecaster Eli Lifland step-by-step reasons about the strategy of slowing frontier training while continuing experiments. He argues it may not matter much on the timescale of training the next model, with two exceptions: (a) you lose a better model for doing RSI, and (b) some failures only appear at frontier-scale training runs, so serial training experience is valuable.

He adds that training compute is generally small relative to experiment compute, so pausing training (redirecting its compute to safety) without pausing experiments likely has limited effect over months.

Related event: Forecaster Eli Lifland doubts training pause will meaningfully slow frontier AI, puts ~25% odds on real slowdown(6 posts)→

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