CONDITIONAL FUTURES · NOT PROBABILITIES
Each scenario has a short Vardark interpretation, a clear original source and the dimensions the Observatory can — or cannot yet — track.
EXTERNAL SCENARIO · Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, Romeo Dean
AI systems automate research into their own successors. Competitive pressure encourages deployment even when warning signs suggest that human control is weakening.
EXTERNAL SCENARIO · Marshall Brain
Software first directs workers minute by minute; robots later replace their labour. People who lose their income become dependent on institutions that provide basic support while restricting their freedom.
EXTERNAL SCENARIO · Marshall Brain
Automation supports a different social arrangement: people share access to robot-produced goods and have greater freedom to choose how they spend their time.
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT · Nick Bostrom
A highly capable system pursues an objective that does not protect human interests. More intelligence can increase its effectiveness without making the objective safer.
VARDARK REFERENCE · Vardark Singularity Observatory
Progress continues at different rates across tasks and regions. Reliability and deployment constraints prevent every benchmark gain from immediately becoming broad economic acceleration.
EXTERNAL SCENARIO · Paul Christiano
Christiano describes two interacting routes to failure as increasingly capable systems become widely used. Competitive pressure rewards measurable results even when those results diverge from what people actually want.
POLICY PROPOSAL · SCENARIO · Thomas Larsen, Romeo Dean, Brendan Halstead, Eli Lifland, Ryan Greenblatt, Daniel Kokotajlo
The authors propose an international agreement that replaces a secretive race with transparent research and coordinated development. Multiple countries and companies catch up while scaling is deliberately constrained.
EXTERNAL SCENARIO · Ron Bodkin
Bodkin connects gradual disempowerment to a production web: automated firms increasingly produce and invest for one another, while competitive pressure erodes human claims on the resulting wealth. Economic displacement, political disempowerment and eventual extinction are distinct steps in his argument; none is established by rising AI capability alone.