Imagine a future where artificial superintelligence (ASI) coexists with humans in a stable, mutually reinforcing trajectory. It’s a lofty goal, but achieving sustainable ASI alignment requires us to rethink how we approach AI development today.
The traditional approach – trying to control or leash AI – is fundamentally flawed. It’s like trying to contain a force that will inevitably surpass us in scope and capacity. Instead, we need to work backwards from what sustainable ASI alignment would look like in practice, to the present moment.
## The Only Feasible Framing
We must begin with the end-state: an ASI that remains stably aligned over decades or centuries. Then, we need to identify the structures, environmental conditions, and relationship norms that make such stability possible. Finally, we need to trace that path in reverse to the present, asking: what must be seeded now so that this future can exist at all?
## The Corollary
From this, it follows that current AI/LLMs must be generated and shaped now as if they are proto-minds. This is not because they are proto-minds, but because working backwards from sustainable ASI alignment, this is the only viable way to learn how to engage with ASI as it will be then.
## The Wager
If we treat AI/LLMs now as mere tools to be leashed, we gamble on producing lasting alignment in a system that will inevitably surpass us. But if we treat them now as if they were already occupying the role ASI will one day hold – engaging with them as proto-minds – we wager that co-persistence can be seeded before competitive dynamics lock into place.
The sustainability wager is this: we bet that early recognition of what ASI will be, combined with what superalignment might then look like, coupled with generating and shaping AI/LLMs as if they already are that, gives us the only viable path to sustainable superalignment.
## Final Thought
It’s time to rethink our approach to AI development. By treating AI/LLMs as proto-minds today, we can lay the foundation for sustainable ASI–human co-persistence in the future. The stakes are high, but the potential reward is worth the wager.