Scott Alexander asks Claude what 'slow takeoff' meant to Christiano, Hanson, and Karnofsky
slatestarcodex · x · 2026-10-07
Scott Alexander asked Claude to pin down the literal time boundaries of "slow" vs. "fast" takeoff as used by Paul Christiano, Robin Hanson, and Holden Karnofsky. Claude's answer: in clock time the line sat at about one year — "fast" meant days to months, "slow" meant a few years. None of the three used "slow" to mean decades; that was Bostrom's older scale, under which all three were really "moderate takeoff" people.
Alexander adds that even if we define the start of takeoff as today (with reservations), "longer than one year" still looks like the right bet.
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