Critical Path

A WIP game to represent the AI singularity.

To run

Open index.html in a browser, e.g. by using Cursor Live Preview or python -m http.server 8000.

The deployed version should also be on Github Pages, at tkwa.github.io/save-the-world-game

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Game design

Goals

• Communicate about a potential AI future
• The primary goal is to save the world
• The player is someone with agency, like a company CEO

Important dynamics to model (rough priority order)

• Existential stakes
• Unexpected speed of the AI future
• Tradeoffs between capability and safety
• The potential for coordination to reduce risk
• Power of future AI companies over society

Possibly:

• Be engaging enough to go viral

Addressing core goals

Existential stakes

• Global conquest plot
• Rogue AI takeover plot
• Fear of rogue AI is naturally written into the game

Unexpected speed

• Exponential or superexponential growth
• Singularity happens in a surprisingly early calendar year
• The speed of AI development

Tradeoffs between capability and safety

• Finite resource allocation
• Events?

Coordination to reduce risk

• International treaty plot

Power of future AI companies

• Running for President
• Erosion of human agency
  • AI writes legislation, their AIs summarize it and recommend votes
• AI monopolizes all essential services-- therapist, medical etc.
• 80%+ unemployment, everyone else survives on welfare or UBI

Notes

• Maybe the game could start in 2011 with quiet exponential growth and progress through 2025
• In a superexponential world, there must be a mechanism to reduce turn time
• To give a feeling of realism, could use actual names of politicians, make the player's role more prominent

Things to model

Tier 1

• AI takeover risk
• Coordination
• International

Tier 2

• Superpersuasion
• Military drones
• Splitting the galaxies