Forethought: US has 9x China's AI compute, can afford to pace the frontier
willmacaskill · x · 2026-10-31
A new Forethought essay by Avi Parrack argues the US can probably slow frontier AI R&D for safety without losing to China: its real edge is roughly 9:1 compute superiority, which increasingly converts into speed and manpower advantage — more parallel experiments, more AI researchers, more AI workers deployed across the economy. The piece, framed against recent misalignment incidents and calls for pacing by Amodei, Altman and Musk, addresses three objections (China pooling compute, export controls failing, accidentally losing the lead) and concludes pacing costs little overall if managed strategically.
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