--- title: AI 2040: Plan A | daily.dev description: A detailed policy scenario called 'Plan A' proposes how the US, China, and the world should navigate the development of superintelligence to avoid existential... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/ai-2040-plan-a-xqxvttovi twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: AI 2040: Plan A | daily.dev og:description: A detailed policy scenario called 'Plan A' proposes how the US, China, and the world should navigate the development of superintelligence to avoid existential... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/ai-2040-plan-a-xqxvttovi og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/XQXVtToVI.png og:image:alt: AI 2040: Plan A og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # AI 2040: Plan A **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 137 min read · 3 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary A detailed policy scenario called 'Plan A' proposes how the US, China, and the world should navigate the development of superintelligence to avoid existential catastrophe. The authors argue that AI companies are on track to build smarter-than-human AI within 1–10 years, and that the default trajectory risks either extinction or unprecedented concentration of power. Plan A recommends delaying superintelligence until 2040 via a US-China bilateral deal involving total AI research transparency, compute declarations, a temporary training pause, and international verification mechanisms. The document contrasts Plan A against four alternatives (Plans B, C, D, and S), analyzing each for risks of misalignment, power concentration, and potential World War III. Key recommendations include mandating open-source AI algorithms (but not model weights), enforcing compute governance, building verification infrastructure, and expanding the deal to a global Consortium. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is Plan A in AI governance discussions and how does it differ from a full AI moratorium? Plan A is a proposed international deal in which the US and China (and eventually most countries) agree to total research transparency for AI R&D, verified compute limits, and a deliberate pause at human-expert-level AI capability from 2035 to 2040 before scaling further. Unlike a full moratorium (Plan S), it allows continued but slowed and monitored AI capability progress, aiming to buy time for alignment research while avoiding permanent stagnation risk from a deal eventually collapsing. _For anyone tracking how AI governance proposals could reshape developer tooling and regulation, daily.dev surfaces this debate._ ### What is Mutually Assured Compute Destruction in the context of US-China AI competition? It is a proposed arrangement where the US and China build new AI datacenters in vulnerable third-party countries (America's in Mongolia, China's in Canada) so that if their AI development agreement collapses, each side can quickly destroy the other's compute before it falls into rival hands, similar in logic to nuclear mutually assured destruction. This is meant to make defection from an AI slowdown deal self-deterring. _Developers weighing how geopolitics could affect AI infrastructure access can follow this reasoning on daily.dev._ ### How does total research transparency propose to prevent AI companies from hiding unsafe training practices? Under the proposal, algorithms and training methodologies must be made fully public while model weights stay restricted, so any company or government training in hidden biases, unsafe capabilities, or secret agendas would be visible to rival companies, third-party auditors, and the public. This removes the incentive to race on secret algorithmic breakthroughs and lets outside parties catch and flag dangerous AI development early. _For those deciding how much transparency AI vendors owe developers, daily.dev tracks proposals like this one._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [AI 2040 and the Cult of Intelligence](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-2040-and-the-cult-of-intelligence-gl7xvshg0) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [A roadmap for AI, if anyone will listen](https://daily.dev/posts/a-roadmap-for-ai-if-anyone-will-listen-tozzqntuz) · TechCrunch · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why 2031 Might Be the Last Year Humans Do AI Research](https://daily.dev/posts/why-2031-might-be-the-last-year-humans-do-ai-research-fgfuyjmjn) · Dev Genius · 6 upvotes · 4 comments - [Hinton, Bengio and AI lab scientists warn of an intelligence explosion](https://daily.dev/posts/hinton-bengio-and-ai-lab-scientists-warn-of-an-intelligence-explosion-tdfvju6dz) · The Next Web · 7 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#ai-safety](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-safety), [#ai-governance](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-governance) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-2040-plan-a-xqxvttovi) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"AI 2040: Plan A","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/ai-2040-plan-a-xqxvttovi","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/ai-2040-plan-a-xqxvttovi"},"datePublished":"2026-07-10T23:21:07.112Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:50:06.450Z","description":"A detailed policy scenario called 'Plan A' proposes how the US, China, and the world should navigate the development of superintelligence to avoid existential...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/baf01fa79d932e423ced49cfbe000096?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/baf01fa79d932e423ced49cfbe000096?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":1,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/ai-2040-plan-a-xqxvttovi","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}],"keywords":"ai,ai-safety,ai-governance","timeRequired":"PT137M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"AI 2040: Plan A"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/ai-2040-plan-a-xqxvttovi#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"What is Plan A in AI governance discussions and how does it differ from a full AI moratorium?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Plan A is a proposed international deal in which the US and China (and eventually most countries) agree to total research transparency for AI R&D, verified compute limits, and a deliberate pause at human-expert-level AI capability from 2035 to 2040 before scaling further. 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