Introduction - SITUATIONAL AWARENESS: The Decade Ahead

Leopold Aschenbrenner argues that the AGI race has begun and that a few hundred people, mostly in San Francisco and the AI labs, can see what is coming. He projects that AI will reach roughly preschooler-to-high-schooler capability jumps by 2027 and that superintelligence could follow by the end of the decade. The essay says big business is pouring trillions of dollars into GPUs, datacenters and power, which could grow US electricity production by tens of percent. It also warns that AI labs treat security as an afterthought, that controlling superintelligent systems is unsolved, and that a government AGI project is likely by 2027 or 2028.