In the AI 2027 scenario, the government becomes extremely interested in AI and discusses nationalizing the AI companies.
Resolved true The record shows it happened or was so.
Prediction: Statements about events outside the person's control, checked once they fell due: did they come true?
What would count as true or false
This is judged on the content of the AI 2027 scenario. TRUE if the published AI 2027 scenario (April 2025) describes the US government (or the relevant government) becoming highly interested in or alarmed about AI and considering or discussing nationalizing AI companies. MOSTLY TRUE if the scenario describes strong government interest and discussion of nationalization-like measures (for example merging labs or taking them under government control) without using the word 'nationalize'. MOSTLY FALSE if it describes government interest but no discussion of nationalization or government control of the companies. FALSE if neither appears.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (3)
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E1 Introducing AI 2027 Astral Codex Ten (Scott Alexander) · 3 April 2025 Own record
“The US government wakes up in early 2027, potentially after seeing the potential for AI to be a decisive strategic advantage in cyberwarfare, and starts pulling AI companies into its orbit - not fully nationalizing them, but pushing them into more of a defense-contractor-like relationship.”
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E2 AI 2027 AI Futures Project (Kokotajlo, Alexander, Larsen, Lifland, Dean) · 3 April 2025 Own record
“In return, said leaders and much of their staff get merged into OpenBrain in a new governance structure.”
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E3 Nationalization of leading AI lab debated — AI 2027 Tracker AI 2027 Tracker · 5 July 2026
“In the scenario, during a crisis meeting about AI model weights being stolen by China, “someone mentions the possibility of nationalizing OpenBrain, but other cabinet officials think that’s premature.””
Reasoning
An independent tracker (E3) quotes the AI 2027 scenario directly: at a cabinet-level crisis meeting about China stealing model weights, "someone mentions the possibility of nationalizing OpenBrain, but other cabinet officials think that's premature." The authors' summary (E1) says the US government "wakes up" in early 2027 and pulls AI companies into its orbit, stopping short of full nationalization. The scenario text (E2) also describes certain leaders and much of their staff being merged into OpenBrain under a new governance structure. Taken together, the scenario shows strong government interest and an explicit discussion of nationalization, which meets the TRUE criterion.
Cite this claim
Scott Alexander, “In the AI 2027 scenario, the government becomes extremely interested in AI and discusses nationalizing the AI companies.” (said 3 April 2025). Verdict: resolved true. Reliability API, claim c_200bd2e3d317, method 0.1.0+8bea457b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_200bd2e3d317
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More prediction claims by Scott Alexander
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Mostly true
“We expect that as the AI labs become more capable, they tell the government about this because they want government contracts, they want government support.”
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Mostly true
“In our scenario, that starts with cyber warfare, the government sees that these AIs are now as capable as the best human hackers, but can be deployed at humongous scale.”
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Mostly true
“Our scenario focuses on coding in particular because we think coding is what starts the intelligence explosion.”
The authors of the scenario think coding is what will start the intelligence explosion.
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Mostly true
“I expect scaling to continue to produce gains, but this is less obvious than it’s been the past five years.”
Scaling AI models will continue to produce gains, though less obviously than in the past five years.
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Resolved true
“Training GPT-4 will cost $100M, which is a lot.”
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