causal claim
For tasks on the long tail, an expert can guide an AI model by making its path of least resistance roughly correct, increasing the chance it produces the correct result.
Tim Scarfe · AI 2040: Plan A report - Daniel Kokotajlo & Thomas Larsen · 8 Sept 2026
In their words
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“And, you know, it might be the case that the path was forged through default modes of training or if it's something slightly on the long tail, then an expert can go in and they could,”
“it's like flashing a light into the darkness and what you're doing is you're kind of making the the path of least resistance roughly correct and then it will do the correct thing so i guess i'm just saying that there's a bit of a supervisor illusion so when experts use it magical things happen in well-specified domains magical things happen but there's still a bit of a space of ambiguity but you know but this this gets to the next point which is like what do you think intelligence is right so the beauty of our collective intelligence”Play from 42:44Report a misattribution
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