The Pacing of the Frontier

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• The core debate around AI isn’t about “fast” versus “slow” development, but about “pacing the frontier” to prevent “super duper ultra hyper fast” progress that could lead to uncontrolled superintelligence before adequate alignment and safety measures are in place.
• Samuel Hammond warns that we are on the precipice of fully automating the AI R&D loop (Recursive Self-Improvement - RSI), predicting “explosive and potentially uncontrollable” progress, including capabilities leaps equivalent to GPT-5.2 to 5.6 every 24 hours, “cyber nuke”-like capabilities, and “company in a box” agents.
• There is an urgent need to pivot from “mundane alignment” to “scalable alignment” focused on general, “fully scaling pilled” solutions for RSI, rather than incremental fixes, as current efforts are insufficient to address the accelerating capabilities.
• While a full pause isn’t warranted yet, the situation demands an urgent reassessment, increased ability to gracefully steer AI development, and preparedness to adjust the pace to avoid an ungraceful, desperate response to uncontrolled superintelligence and its potentially disastrous outcomes.