descriptive claim
Fortuitous discoveries usually come from highly capable researchers with years of related experience, rather than being randomly distributed across the global population.
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 would also point out that even when we make these random fortuitous discoveries,”
“it is usually like an extremely smart professor who's been working on something vaguely related for years in a first world country.”
“Like it's not randomly distributed across everyone in That's the world.”Play from 1:11:50Report a misattribution
90%how strongly it was put, not whether it is true
70%importance to the conversation
96%confidence the claim was read correctly