prediction claim
The speaker thinks a technologically equipped, highly intelligent team of ethnobotanists could determine which Australian plants are safe to eat in less than 50,000 years.
Scott Alexander · AI 2027: month-by-month model of intelligence explosion — Scott Alexander & Daniel Kokotajlo · 3 Apr 2025
In their words
The transcript segments this claim was taken from
“I think that if you were to send a team of ethnobotanists into Australia and ask them, using all the top technology and all of their intelligence,”
“to figure out which plants are safe to eat now,”
“that team of ethnobotanists would succeed in fewer than 50,000 years.”Play from 1:20:52Report a misattribution
75%how strongly it was put, not whether it is true
40%importance to the conversation
90%confidence the claim was read correctly