Presage
Scenarios/Gradual Diffusion
Mixed Active by 2035

Gradual Diffusion

Capability keeps climbing, but absorbs into the economy without a discontinuity.

Probability this is the dominant trajectory by 2035
22–32%
22–32%
1 revision · 0/2 tripwires crossed

The scenario

Models improve steadily through 2035. Agents take over most software, analysis and back-office work over a decade rather than a year. Institutions strain but adapt: retraining, new firms, new regulation arriving late but arriving. No single event marks "AGI"; people argue about whether it happened. This is the branch most forecasters treat as the default, and the one where preparation is cheapest because there is time.

Preconditions

  • No recursive self-improvement loop closes inside a lab
  • Compute and energy growth continues but stays constrained by grid and chip supply
  • No catastrophic safety incident forces a hard stop
  • Frontier labs remain a small oligopoly with gated top tiers

Leading indicators

  • METR task-horizon doubling time stays near 5–7 months rather than collapsing
  • Unemployment in AI-exposed occupations rises by low single digits per year
  • Frontier releases remain incremental (no >2x jump on broad agentic benchmarks in one release)

Tripwires

Observable thresholds. When one crosses, the scenario's status changes and the weekly re-run is brought forward.

cleargd-t1
A frontier lab reports its models perform the majority of its own research engineering
Would move weight toward Lab Takeoff.
cleargd-t2
Twelve consecutive months without a new state-of-the-art frontier model
Would move weight toward Plateau.

Playbook

Prevent
  • Not a branch to prevent; the goal is to keep it from sliding into Displacement Shock or Loss of Control.
Detect
  • Track release cadence, benchmark deltas and labor data monthly against the indicators above.
Respond

individuals

  • Build fluency with agentic tools in your own field; the advantage is in supervision and judgment, not in competing with the tool
  • Keep 6–12 months of financial runway and a second skill that is physical, relational or licensed

organizations

  • Adopt agents in bounded, auditable workflows first; instrument everything
  • Publish an internal AI use policy and an incident-reporting path before you need one

governments

  • Fund retraining and wage insurance now, while the tax base is intact
  • Make frontier-model pre-deployment testing mandatory and fund the evaluators
Recover
  • Not applicable; this branch is the one to steer toward and stabilize.

Probability history

Every change is logged with its reason and the signals that drove it. Moves are bounded per week; a jump beyond the bound is flagged as a shock.

Probability range over time
Your estimate

Disagree with our range? Set yours. Estimates feed a community view that appears once enough people weigh in, and the weekly run reads the gap between our number and yours.

27%
2026-09-16
22–32%
seed

Seed estimate. This is the current observed trajectory: frontier releases every few months, agentic coding widely deployed, no economy-wide job loss through mid-2026, and no confirmed discontinuity. Held below 35% because both takeoff and incident branches gained weight in the last three weeks.

signals: sig-2026-08-31-open-model-wave, sig-2026-09-10-anthropic-economy

Signals pushing on this branch

2026-08-31
release
●○○○○

Wave of cheap and open models: Granite 4.2, Qwen 3.8-Flash, Hy4, Mercury 2.5

Multiple vendors shipped small, fast or open-weight models in one week, continuing the diffusion of near-frontier capability at low cost.

timelines ▲ faster concentration ▼ open safety —
Digital Applied · ledger
2026-08-26
statement
●●○○○

Altman: OpenAI will have an internal system it calls AGI by end of 2026

In a TIME interview the OpenAI CEO said the company expects an internal system it would label AGI before year end, while conceding there is no agreed definition.

timelines ▲ faster concentration — safety —
Gigazine / TIME · ledger

Built on

Every source reviewed for this scenario. The full ledger is public.

DateSourcePublisherType
2026-09-16Date of Artificial General Intelligence (Q5121)
Community median 18 Jul 2031; range Jul 2028 – Feb 2038; ~1,900 forecasters.
Metaculusforecast
2026-05LEAP Wave 8: AI timelines
Experts' conditional median AGI 2050 (IQR 2039–2065); superforecasters 2047. Expected 2040 impact rising.
Forecasting Research Institutesurvey
2026-09-10Anthropic 2030 economy model: GDP and jobs scenarios
Unemployment 4.6% to ~12% across scenarios; labor share 59% → 45%; young workers in AI-exposed jobs ~19% below peers.
Economic Insidernews
2026AGI forecasting and scenario analysis: state of the field
Methodological gaps in AGI scenario work; informs our methodology page.
RANDpaper

Branches

Two-Speed World

Mixed Active by 2030

Frontier capability is gated to vetted users; the public gets a lagging tier. Power concentrates in who holds the keys.

35–50%
1 revision

Regulated Diffusion

Mixed Possible by 2030

Binding law arrives: duty of care, licensing, release blocking. Compliance slows and shapes deployment.

20–35%
1 revision

Managed Acceleration

Good Watch by 2030

Labs agree to pace the frontier and share evaluations; progress continues under a coordinated speed limit.

15–28%
1 revision