Daniel Kokotajlo
Executive Director, AI Futures Project
About
Daniel Kokotajlo is an AI safety researcher and Executive Director of the AI Futures Project, a Berkeley-based nonprofit researching the future impact of artificial intelligence. A former philosophy PhD student, he worked at AI Impacts and the Center on Long-Term Risk before joining OpenAI as a governance researcher in 2022. He resigned from OpenAI in 2024, forfeiting approximately $2 million in equity by refusing to sign a non-disparagement agreement, citing loss of confidence that the company would behave responsibly around AGI development. He co-organized the 'Right to Warn' initiative for AI whistleblower protections and published AI 2027, a detailed AGI forecast scenario read by over a million people.
Key Contributions
- Co-founded AI Futures Project to turn AGI forecasting into concrete public scenarios rather than abstract timelines
- Published 'AI 2027,' a month-by-month scenario that made intelligence-explosion arguments accessible and debatable
- Resigned from OpenAI and gave up reported equity rather than sign terms he believed limited his ability to warn publicly
- Co-organized Right to Warn, pushing for whistleblower protections for employees at frontier AI labs
- His forecasts are unusually specific and useful for debate, but critics question their confidence, assumptions, and scenario-driven persuasion style
Videos & Interviews
2027 Intelligence Explosion: Month-by-Month Model — Scott Alexander & Daniel Kokotajlo
Dwarkesh Patel podcast — 3-hour deep dive on the AI 2027 scenario
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Daniel Kokotajlo on what a hyperspeed robot economy might look like
80,000 Hours podcast on AI 2027 updates and robot economy scenarios
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Why the AI Race Ends in Disaster (with Daniel Kokotajlo)
Future of Life Institute podcast on AI acceleration risks
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