Fork 1: Will AI Progress Fizzle Before Transformative Impact?
The opening gate of Scott Aaronson & Boaz Barak's decision tree: Does AI hit fundamental data, energy, or architectural walls (YES → AI-Fizzle, ~3%), or does it achieve revolution-scale transformative impact before 2050 (NO → 97%)?
“Even if scaling hit a wall tomorrow, integrating existing frontier models into the global economy already virtually rules out a true 'AI-Fizzle' by 2050.: When Boaz Barak and I defined AI-Fizzle in April 2023, we compared it to nuclear power or supersonic flight—technologies that worked but plateaued below a general societal revolution. With 24+ years remaining until 2050 and agentic coding/research systems already transforming software and science in 2026, the burden of proof for a 25-year global stall is extraordinarily high.”
Click any branch card to glide the presentation down that path, or drag a slider to test live What-If splits.
AI-Fizzle (YES: Fizzles)
AI hype peters out or hits severe diminishing returns. While AI remains a useful industry (like nuclear power or commercial aviation), its civilizational impact falls well short of the Industrial or Computer revolutions.
Will Civilization Recognizably Continue?
Conditional on AI not fizzling (97%), does human civilization recognizably continue with humans using AI as powerful tools/institutions (YES → 71% split / 69% overall: Futurama or AI-Dystopia), or does an intelligence explosion end recognizable human history (NO → 29% split / 28% overall: Singularia or Paperclipalypse)?