The Sequence

Thirteen pages, meant to be read in order. Part I is the case that any of this matters — it starts at the problem of other minds and ends at instrumental convergence. Part II is the mechanism: what you actually do if you accept Part I and conclude the project is better not started.

This is not an introduction to AI safety and does not try to be one. I assume throughout that you have at least heard the standard arguments, and where I go over them it is to say which parts I actually hold rather than to teach them. If you are arriving cold, aisafety.info is the best primer I know — a maintained Q&A covering the basics from why anyone worries about this at all upward, and it will serve you better than anything I would write in its place.

Part I · Why Bother

01. The Only Thing You Know Is Conscious
The one fact about qualia you have direct access to is your own, and you cannot get behind that fact to check anyone else's.
alpha revised 2026-09-11
02. A Best Lower Bound on Other Minds
A similarity-weighted, pluralist prior over who is a moral patient — the best answer I have found to a question that admits no proof.
alpha revised 2026-09-11
03. Competence Does Not Require Qualia
The successionist error: treating capability as evidence of moral patienthood. It is not, and people are strangely reluctant to say so.
alpha revised 2026-09-11
04. The Universe With Nobody Home
Not suffering, not human extinction as such: a cosmos in which nothing experiences anything, and which therefore has no moral relevance at all.
alpha revised 2026-09-10
05. Almost All Utility Functions Are Irrational
Instrumental convergence, Bostrom and Yudkowsky, and an intuition about measure: the aligned targets are a vanishingly thin set.
alpha revised 2026-09-11

Part II · What To Do

06. The Hook
A thousand-dollar littering fine, a fifty-dollar camera, and the small market that grows up around them.
alpha revised 2026-09-11
07. The Gist
Hanson's fine-insured bounties in general form, and the conspiracy arithmetic that makes silence expensive.
alpha revised 2026-09-11
08. The Insurer
The insurance market is the part that does the actual deterring, and it does it before anyone is ever charged.
alpha revised 2026-09-11
09. The Goal
The target is not punishment and not even prevention of any particular project. It is to make the marginal researcher take a different job.
alpha revised 2026-09-11
10. Making It Global
A mechanism that stops at a border relocates the risk instead of reducing it. What adoption would actually have to look like, and what it would still fail to reach.
alpha revised 2026-09-11
11. Compare and Contrast
How this proposal stacks up against the other things people suggest, including on the axes where it loses badly.
alpha revised 2026-09-11
12. The Catches
The strongest objections to the mechanism, collected in one place, stated at full strength, and answered only where I can answer them.
alpha revised 2026-09-11
13. Next Steps
What a serious first version looks like, starting somewhere that is not AI at all.
alpha revised 2026-09-11

Policy-research disclaimer

Extinction Bounties publishes theoretical economic and legal mechanisms intended to stimulate scholarly and public debate on catastrophic-risk governance. The site offers policy analysis and advocacy only in the sense of outlining possible legislative or contractual frameworks.

No legal or financial advice

Nothing here should be treated as a substitute for qualified legal counsel, financial due diligence, or regulatory guidance. Readers remain responsible for ensuring their actions comply with the laws and professional standards of their own jurisdictions.

Exploratory and personal views

All scenarios, numerical examples and opinions are research hypotheses presented by the author in a personal capacity. They do not represent the views of the author's employer, funding bodies, or any governmental authority.

Implementation caveats

Any real-world adoption of these ideas would require democratic deliberation, statutory authority, and robust safeguards against misuse. References to enforcement, penalties, or "bounties" are illustrative models, not instructions or invitations to engage in private policing or unlawful conduct. Nothing here is directed at any identifiable individual — see non-targeting.

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