"Plan A" is a strategic proposal designed to navigate the transition to superintelligence without triggering an existential catastrophe or an irreversible concentration of global power. Current AI development trajectories—driven by a competitive, secretive race between a few dominant firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and xAI—are fundamentally reckless. The stated goal of these companies is to build smarter-than-human AI within the next decade, yet the authors contend that the industry lacks an adequate plan for controlling such systems. Without a course correction, they predict two likely outcomes: human extinction or a global dictatorship controlled by the small group that first achieves a superintelligent 'army.'

Plan A is framed as a 'positive vision' rather than a prediction of the default path. It utilizes 'scenario scrutiny,' a method of testing policy by imagining detailed future timelines to identify potential failures and side effects. The core of Plan A is to delay the emergence of superintelligence until 2040, providing a decade-long safety buffer to establish human-centric control mechanisms. This transition involves shifting from a race to a regime of international cooperation, specifically between the US and China, characterized by 'mutually assured compute destruction' and total research transparency.

The scenario begins in 2027, a period where AI agents are already a pervasive part of the workforce. While recursive self-improvement has not yet occurred, the concentration of power has become a major political crisis. The authors anticipate the passage of the 'AI Transparency Act of 2027,' an incremental step requiring companies to report model specifications and limit the gap between internal and external AI deployment. They argue that transparency is vital because internal deployments are where the primary risks of autonomous self-improvement lie.

As the 2028 US election approaches, AI becomes the central political issue. Public anxiety grows regarding economic disruption and the looming 'intelligence explosion.' To prevent a world where AIs autonomously design their successors without human oversight, the plan suggests a landmark international agreement in 2029. This deal would involve sharing R&D data to ensure all nations can enforce safety guardrails. Under this framework, AI capabilities would be intentionally limited to the level of 'top human experts' between 2030 and 2035. A formal pause would then be maintained until 2040 to refine alignment and safety protocols before eventually 'unpausing' and scaling to superintelligence.